Addicted for Now

{ 33 } LOREN HALE

No one speaks in the car, from the tarmac to our house in Princeton, New Jersey. Melissa calls a taxi to bring her back to Penn, so at least we don’t have to deal with that.

Connor’s black limo gives us all plenty of room. Lily rests her head in my lap, trying to play cat’s cradle with my shoelace. She stopped crying sometime between our fifth game of Go Fish and when the plane landed.

I want her to call Allison, but she keeps saying she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. And I guess I have no right to force her to speak to her therapist when I’ve been avoiding mine. Regardless, I plan on calling Allison tonight whether Lily does or not. I have to ask about medication for Lil.

No one understands lows like an addict. And I fear the one she’s about to hit when she confronts her parents.

She holds up the intertwined shoelace in her fingers. “Your turn,” she tells me. “Go under my hands and grab it.”

“I’m going to mess it up.”

“No you won’t,” she says. “Just make sure to grab the right ones.”

Problem is, I don’t know which are the right ones.

Rose sits stiffly beside Connor, her cell clutched in her steel-grip. Lily told me that Rose has been in “damage control mode”—she even yelled at a reputable news producer for an hour before Connor pried the phone from her fingers. She’s been texting and emailing gossip magazines and lawyers since we landed.

Rose isn’t taking the leak very well. She keeps fixing her hair and smoothing her dress. Connor has to grab her hands to stop her. And as I look between the three Calloway girls—Rose in a frazzled state, Daisy drifting far away, and Lil with a sad, soft voice—I get it. I get what Ryke sees and what he feels. I have this insane wish to just make things right again, to plug all the cracks in our lives—just for the small, sliver of hope that these girls will be able to stand up on their own for one more day.

I think the six of us—we’re all strong. We’re each just a different kind of strong. But we all have a different kind of weak too. And I’m figuring out how to bottle my weakness to help them all.

I’m not going to be the villain of my own story. That shit is done.

Rose’s phone buzzes. She stares at the screen, Connor reading the text too. “We have a little hiccup,” she says.

Lily’s hands fall to her lap, tangling the shoelace herself. “What?” Her worry cracks her voice. I rub her arm, and she holds onto my bicep for support.

“Our parents are at our house,” Rose says. “They’re waiting for you.”

Lily bolts upright, shaking her head fiercely. “I can’t, Rose. I need another day.”

Gilligan, Connor’s driver, remains quiet behind the wheel, leading us down our street. Only a couple blocks away, news vans line the curb, most likely camped out by the gate.

Daisy presses her nose to the window. “Holy shit.”

Lily’s eyes widen at the scene.

She can’t handle this right now. That much is certain. I look to Ryke and he just nods once. “Gilligan,” I call to the front and tap the privacy screen. It lowers so I can see his bald head. “Change of plans. We’re going to Philly.”

Ryke’s off-campus flat has brick walls and hardwood floors, a Philadelphia 76ers poster hanging in the dim living room, fit with leather beanbags, a big screen television, and a decent-sized sound system. I’ve been here only a few times before, and it’s hard to remember that this isn’t just another random apartment. It’s my brother’s.

After a quick call to Allison, I get an approval to give Lily a sleeping pill. She falls asleep in the spare bedroom, quicker than I thought she would. Crying must have exhausted her already.

When I return to the living room, I take a swift glance outside. No news vans or camera crews. Not many people know that Ryke Meadows is related to me, and in this instance, it comes in handy.

Connor and Rose talk in hushed whispers on the couch, sometimes even switching to French. He told me that the private investigator is still working on finding the leak. Same thing my father said about his connections. A part of me feels hopeless by the news—like maybe we’ll just never know. Another part of me thinks maybe I shouldn’t know. Because I have a penchant for hurting people who hurt Lily or me. And I don’t want to be the guy who threatens someone else’s future anymore. I don’t want to become my father.

“I just got off the phone with a friend,” Connor says.

“You have other friends?” I ask with a frown. Why, out of everything, does this bother me? Maybe I’m too fucking emotional right now. I rub my eyes, trying to pull myself together.

“Acquaintance, contact,” Connor tells me, “whatever you want to call him.”

Ryke walks over and hands me a glass of something amber-colored. I stiffen and give him a look. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s tea.”

I barely relax but take the glass anyway.

Connor continues, “My contact told me there are cameras outside my apartment. I just wanted to let you know that they’re seeking all avenues to get information.” Even Lily’s sister’s boyfriend—a far fucking stretch.

Daisy sits on the hardwood floor, the remote control in her hands as she stares at the blank television. I can see her curiosity. She’s the one still halfway in the dark, and all the answers lie in that box. She offered to be brought back to her house, but Lily and Rose refused. Their parents are as bloodthirsty for information as the media, and we all know they’d sink their claws into Daisy if they had her.

So she stays with us for now.

I stare at the floor, trying to piece together a semblance of a plan. First things first. I turn to Connor who relaxes against the couch. His arm stays around Rose’s shoulders, and I realize that he’s subtly massaging her neck so she’ll be more at ease.

I didn’t want to drag him through all of this, and with his usual impassive expression, I can’t tell if it bothers him that paparazzi have invaded his apartment building.

“You’re not related to Lily or me. If you want out, you should probably leave now before things worsen.”

I expect Rose to spit at me for untethering her own boyfriend from this complicated matter. Because it’d mean that Connor would have to leave her too. But she’s busy texting on her cell, inhaling sharp breaths every so often that sound like knives slicing her lungs. I even saw her pop some kind of medication.

“Rose already showed me where the door is,” Connor says. “I’m fairly capable of knowing when and how to walk out of it.”

“The media may get worse,” I remind him, but I forget that Connor has probably weighed all the possibilities in his head, and maybe even created a mental spreadsheet of the pros and cons of the situation.

“Yes, and you’ll need someone who doesn’t curse every five words to handle the press.”

Ryke rolls his eyes, the dig clearly referring to him. “Journalism major,” Ryke says, pointing to his chest. “I know the press better than you, Cobalt.”

“And do you really plan on doing anything with that degree?”

Ryke says nothing.

“Exactly.”

“What about your mother’s company?” I ask Connor.

“Cobalt Inc. isn’t a household name. People don’t associate us with our products like they do Hale Co.—your name is on the label of every baby shampoo and diaper package. We deal with manufacturers and subsidiaries.” Like MagNetic, I remember. “My affiliation with you or Lily won’t hurt the company, and for that, my mother won’t care. And plus, if she’s outside of the scandal looking in, she enjoys the drama from time to time. It keeps her days interesting.”

I wonder if that’s how he sees us sometimes. Interesting. Entertainment. Something to make each day unpredictable.

I also can’t imagine the woman who spawned someone like Connor. She seems as fabricated as a character in one of my comics.

“Like I said, Lo,” Connor finishes, “I know how to use the door.”

Ryke nods to me. “You going to give me an out too?”

“No, if I’m going down, you’re burning with me.”

“Does that qualify as a brotherly obligation?”

“For me, yeah.”

Daisy fumbles with the remote and it drops loudly on the hardwood. “Sorry,” she mumbles and continues to stare at the black television.

I want to watch the news and figure out how much the media already knows. Finding the leak has become a second priority. Our first task is to clean up whatever blowback we’re about to receive. I suspect Greg Calloway and possibly my father are already working with a team of lawyers to subdue the crisis. One of the many reasons they’ll want to talk to us.

I don’t trust them. But I do trust the people in this room, and that’s enough to put me at ease for the current moment.

I realize Daisy is still in the dark—about a lot of things. It’s not fair to her, especially since we’ll be talking freely now. “Do you have any questions, Daisy?” I ask, slouching on the couch.

She places the remote carefully on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on the floor.

“I do have a beanbag,” Ryke says.

“I see it.” But she hugs her knees loosely, making no move. Her eyes flit to me. “I have hundreds of questions, but I can wait to ask Lily. I don’t want her to be upset if you reveal something that she wants to keep secret.”

“You’re going to hear it on the television or the tabloids anyway,” I tell her. “She would prefer if you knew the truth from me.”

She hesitates. “I can ask anything?”

Anything is a strong word, but I’m confident in my ability to deflect the too-personal questions. I agree with a nod.

“If this is going to be a Q&A, then I have a couple questions as well,” Ryke says.

I smile bitterly. “Of course you do.”

Daisy throws the nearest pillow at him. “This is my Q&A.”

He catches the pillow. “Now you’re throwing my things, but you won’t sit on the damn beanbag?”

“You’re pushy—did anyone ever tell you that?”

“I do all the time,” I say. “He never listens.”

Ryke raises his hands like what the fuck. “I’m sorry if I can tell that there’s an uncomfortable girl on my fucking floor, and I know how to fix the problem.”

“Don’t,” I warn him. We’re not opening those floodgates ever, ever again. I can withstand him being friendly to Daisy in tiny microscopic doses, but when he starts talking about girls on floors and fixing shit, it makes me nervous.

Daisy asks the first question, which doesn’t necessarily lessen any tension in the room. I’m not sure anything can after the leak. “Have you and Lily been in an open relationship?”

I like to refer to what we had as a “fake” relationship, but when we became a pretend couple, we were a couple. I had everything with her that a boyfriend would have. Except the sex. But when I think of open relationships, I picture swingers and people who have multiple partners. I’m sure the term is vague enough to encompass a variety of situations. Just not ours.

I don’t have a yes or no answer for Daisy, so I have to go into explaining what we did. How we lied to her and everyone around us. How our friendship turned into something more but still remained something less.

“Wow,” Daisy says when I finish. “All to hide your addictions? Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, moved to Europe?”

“We contemplated it.”

Her face falls. “I was joking.”

I shrug, indifferent about it all. “Lily and I never ignored you because you’re younger. The phone calls we didn’t pick up, the lunches we canceled, all of that was because we’d rather drink and have sex than be around people. Especially ones that we’d have to lie to.”

“That’s messed up,” Daisy tells me.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Actually, I told you it was fucked up,” Ryke clarifies.

Daisy ignores him. “Why is she a sex addict? Is there something that caused it?”

My throat goes dry and my eyes flicker to the bedroom door.

Lily and I haven’t discussed the cause of her addiction, but I know she’s been trying to sparse through the past with Allison.

Lily shuts down when it comes to her childhood, refusing to look at her relationship with her family for what it truly is. I can touch her painful memories without being terrorized by the hurt, and in turn she can focus on mine without bearing the guilt. It’s a symbiosis that I’ve come to recognize after hours and hours of therapy.

Whether we allow ourselves to open up to our own feelings—well that’s something we’re both working on.

My silence lingers in the air as I try to focus on a suitable answer.

Ryke grows restless by the quiet. “I’ve read that eighty percent of sex addicts are abused as a child. Did Lily—”

“No,” I cut him off, my tone defensive and edged. My eyes bear the same heat, and I wonder if this is why Ryke has never asked me that question before.

“I’m not the only one who will fucking ask that,” he snaps. “You’re going to have to start being less sensitive.”

I glower at that word…sensitive. It makes me sound weak and fragile. It’s one of those words in my father’s arsenal. I wasn’t living up to my potential when I failed a sixth grade math test, when I had to do a group project alone after no one picked me, when I lost a Little League game. He told me I was worthless, and as a kid I didn’t know how to stop those tears. Don’t be so sensitive, Loren. You’re being too sensitive, Loren. Why are you so goddamn sensitive, Loren? So I stopped crying. Now I just get mad.

My eyes are on Ryke and my mouth moves before I can stop it. “I’m not sensitive,” I deadpan. “You’re the one who flinched every time I called your mother a cunt.” Granted, that was before I knew Sara Hale was his mom. I just thought she was mine, the one who abandoned me.

On cue, Ryke cringes at literally the only cuss word he can’t stand.

I watch the way his face flips through emotions, and in a quick second he settles on one: Guilt.

I expected rage, a battle of words, something to perpetuate the turmoil spinning in my stomach. Not his eyes to cloud with remorse, as if he was the one who spitefully slandered his mother.

He knows me. He knows what I was thinking, why I say the things I do. Between the aggressive attitude and foul language, I often forget Ryke has a brain, probably one that works better than mine.

“Not sensitive,” he says softly, almost hesitant. “I think guarded and defensive are better words.”

His eyes fill with apologies, not wanting to hurt me like my father does. Ryke doesn’t have the same fear as me, the one where I turn into Jonathan Hale. But for a moment, Ryke must have tasted what it was like to be him. I personally know it isn’t pleasant.

After a deep breath, I say, “I can’t help it. I’m always going to be defensive when it comes to Lily.”

“We’re her sisters,” Rose pipes in. “Everyone in this room loves Lily and you. We are the last people you should be guarded around.”

Something burns inside of me, words that ache to be released. I’ve never talked to any of Lily’s sisters about their childhood. I only know what I’ve seen and what Lily has told me. If anyone can fill in the blanks and help me answer Daisy’s question, it’s Rose.

“Why was Lily allowed to spend nights at my house?” I ask.

“You were her friend.”

“Rose. What friends at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old spend the majority of nights at someone else’s house?”

She narrows her eyes. “It was usually on the weekend.”

Holy shit. Someone has taken a sledgehammer to my stomach.

By the look on her face, she has no idea how many nights Lily slept at my house when we were children. But how many activities did Rose’s mother bombard her with? Ballet, horseback riding, piano, French.

Off my shock, Rose starts shaking her head fiercely. “I would have known. I would have seen her walk through the front door in the mornings…” Her face falls, and Connor reaches for her hand while she stares off dazedly.

“You never saw her in the mornings,” I say what Rose is thinking. “My father’s driver always took us to school from my house.”

“I had club meetings in the morning. I left early all the time, so I just thought she was asleep.” It wasn’t Rose’s duty to take care of Lily. She’s only two years older. “How many nights did Lily sleep at your house?”

“In middle school, about four days a week, and then she just kept coming over more and more until high school…” I shake my head and cringe. It’s my fault. A huge part of what happened, I know, I caused. “…in high school, she slept over almost every night.”

“I didn’t know that either,” Daisy admits. I’m not surprised. Daisy is a lot younger, and when she turned about eleven, her mother started pursuing acting and modeling agencies for her. And for the majority of Daisy’s tweens, I remember how she always looked exhausted, eyes heavy-lidded and yawning more than talking.

“Our parents couldn’t have known about your sleepovers,” Rose says. “They would have never allowed it.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

This is where my chest constricts, where vile resentment starts to pound in my head. I didn’t have these feelings towards Samantha and Greg Calloway until I went to rehab. Before that, I thought they were the coolest parents for letting their daughter, my best friend, spend an exorbitant amount of time with me. Sitting in therapy for three months and becoming sober has cleared the dust.

I’m beginning to understand what happened.

Connor’s mouth slowly parts in realization, letting me know he’s put the pieces together. Why Lily is the way she is.

Rose is clouded by her own relationship with her parents. She sees a mother who inserts herself into her daughters’ lives to the point where compassion transforms into suffocation. She sees a father who loves his children, buying them fancy things and sending them to exotic places to show his affection.

“Loren,” Rose says, “finish what you have to say.”

“Every day, Lily asked her mother if she could spend the night at my house. The answer was always the same. And then when Lily was fourteen or fifteen, Samantha finally told us to just stop asking, that she’d approve no matter what.”

I remember Lily crying onto my pillow that same night. She never told me straight out, but I knew the only reason she even asked her mother in the first place was because she wanted to hear the word no. A single sign that her mother cared about her the same way that she did Poppy, Rose, and Daisy. That she wasn’t undeserving of her mother’s time and attention. Her mother doted on her other sisters. She put all her excess energy into them, skipping right over Lily as though she was worthless of that affection.

And so she tried to find it down the street. With me. And when that wasn’t enough, she tried to fill it with other men. With sex. With a high and an intense burst of emotion.

“You know why Lily was allowed at my house at night?” I ask Rose, starting from the beginning again.

Her cheeks concave, her back goes rigid, and a familiar chill fills her eyes. “Because you’re a Hale.”

That’s what I thought.

“What does that fucking mean?” Ryke asks.

“Lily didn’t need to be good at anything,” I tell him. “Her mother passed over her because she was my friend. I was her future.” The heir of a multi-billion dollar empire. Her mother concentrated on Daisy, on Rose, who could be more successful in other facets. But Lily—her worth centered on a guy. Me. And I think, somewhere in her head, she believed it herself. That she would never amount to anything more than pleasing other men. That she was destined for a life less than her sister’s.

Daisy frowns. “I thought Lily just got a pass since she was kind of average at everything. I’ve always been jealous of the freedom she gets.”

I nod. “Lily thinks she should be grateful for the freedom too.” That’s why she has trouble admitting to herself that she’s been hurt by her mother. She could have been suffocated like her sisters. And she wasn’t.

But there should have been a happy medium between what Lily had and what Daisy is now enduring.

I pause for a second, these words some of the hardest to produce. “Your mother outwardly loved you, Daisy, and you, Rose,” I say looking to each of the girls. “Even Poppy was showered with this type of overbearing maternal affection. And Lily…she was denied all of that. She was like the runt in the litter.”

Rose’s eyes glass like she may cry. I’ve never witnessed tears from her. I always imagined that they’d ice over. Her voice, however, is strangely stoic. “I didn’t realize…” She shakes her head. “My mother wanted the two of you to become a couple. I knew that, but I blamed you more for taking my sister away from me. I didn’t realize that she really had nowhere else to go.”

Well that kind of makes me feel like shit. She makes it sound like I was Lily’s only option. “She could have stayed home.”

“She would have been alone, Loren. I was barely around because of school and ballet.”

And then a wave of guilt just annihilates me. “Yeah, well maybe she should have been alone. Look what good it did being around me.” I shake my head, running my hands repeatedly through my hair. My leg starts to jostle in anxiety.

“You didn’t do this,” Rose tells me. “Our mother should have told her that she loved her for something more than being with you. She could have found her something to do, something to achieve.” A dream, a passion, a hobby, a fucking sport. Sex became all of those things for Lily. And I never stopped her. Not once. I was so consumed with my addiction that I didn’t care what the hell she did, as long as she was breathing at the end of the night. As long as she was by my side—my best fucking friend.

“You don’t understand,” I mutter. I led her here. Unknowingly, I brought her to this place in her life. If I never even existed, she would have received that love from her mother that she craved.

“Then tell me.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Loren—”

“She slept in my bed!” I shout, my eyes welling. They burn so badly. “I let her sleep in the same bed as me. Okay, this wasn’t Dawson’s Creek. I never kicked her out after we hit puberty.”

Rose whispers to Connor, “I don’t understand the correlation.”

“Dawson and Joey stopped sleeping in the same bed together in the first episode. She said that he was old enough to get an erection.”

Rose looks back to me. “You didn’t have sex with her every night, did you?”

“No, but—”

“You can’t compare your life to a television show.” The fact that Rose is defending me does not entirely help. I’m used to her tearing me down, not building me up. I keep waiting for someone to thrash me with their words, with their feelings. With hate. I deserve that pain. It’s my fucking fault.

“You don’t get it!” I’m on my feet somehow. “I could have stopped her. I should have walked her down that road every night. I should have done something.” Instead I gave her a bed to sleep in, a place to fill her vice.

“Loren,” Rose starts.

“Stop,” I say, placing my hands on my head, these thoughts swarming me in a tidal wave, the guilt so unbearable on my chest. “You should hate me,” I tell her. “I deserve that.” I nod. “I broke your sister.” My face contorts in pain, a hot tear escaping. I want to punch something. To go run until my heart stops, until the breath just leaves me cold and dry.

No one says a thing. They wait for me to collect my bearings.

My breathing slows, and I rub my face. When I drop my hands, I say softly, “I wish I could take it all back.” I want to reverse time. To walk Lily right out of my house, down the street and to her own bedroom door. I would tell her that it’s okay if her mother doesn’t love her because her sisters do. And she doesn’t need to avoid her house by being in mine—that she shouldn’t keep searching for love in sex because it will only leave her empty and miserable.

I should have told her all of these things, but I didn’t know any of them back then. And I was too goddamn drunk to care.

“It’s not your fault,” Rose says. “You were a kid. We all were.”

“And you have a shitty fucking father,” Ryke adds.

“And no mother,” Daisy says.

“And you were an alcoholic,” Connor concludes.

It’s like they’re my conscience, and yet, they’re only my friends. For the first time, I have them, and I feel tears build at the words that I never thought I’d hear.

It’s not your fault. Yeah, I’m getting there. I can believe it one day, I think.

I have weathered the most painful answer. I can manage any others now.

I look to Daisy.

“Next question.”

{ 34 } LILY CALLOWAY

A full week has passed. And I haven’t left Ryke’s apartment. School is an afterthought, even though my last test is in a few days. I’ll just show up and pass and then be back to my reclusive state before finals begin. I have no intention of seeing my parents, and if Lo and Ryke would let me, I’d be a hermit for the rest of my life.

But Ryke is not the kind of person who coddles, and Lo refuses to enable me anymore. So they have awarded me a seven day “grace period.” Or what they like to call “the time it takes to get my shit together to face my parents.” It may have taken God seven days to create the world, but I think I may need more time to screw my head on right. I am not Christ-like. When I mentioned this to Lo, he told me I could have an extra sympathy day. I think he said that word on purpose—sympathy. I crinkled my nose and decided to take the seven days instead.

I’m on Day Seven. Judgment Day. The one where I’ll have to face my mom and dad.

The majority of the camera crews remain at our house in Princeton or the one in Villanova. Rose and Daisy have been staying at Connor’s since the cameras are sparse around his neighborhood. Plus he has more room at his bachelor pad.

My parents have opted to stay silent when it comes to the media. They paid their lawyers a hefty sum just to utter the words “no comment.” There will be a press conference at some point, especially since Fizzle and Hale Co. stock have dropped considerably.

After home-visits and lengthy phone calls with Dr. Banning, we agreed that I need to read and watch what’s being said about me. Her words were, “Don’t internalize your feelings when you hear what people are saying. If they upset you then let it out.” She also told me to make light of every painful situation—to uncover a silver lining and humor in all the bad. Anything to soften the gut-wrenching blows.

I sit on the leather couch and perform my usual morning ritual. Turn on the television to the morning news and flip open my laptop to the gossipy, tabloid websites.

“We still don’t have an official statement from Lily Calloway or her family,” the news anchor says. “But we have a psychologist here today to talk about sex addiction and the dangers.” Boo. I spend hours in therapy; I do not want to listen to this. I mute the TV and focus on the computer.

I type my name into the search engine. Various articles titled Sex Addict pop up. One even says, Sex Addict or Slut? And there’s a lengthy debate on whether sex addiction is truly an addiction or whether I’m a whore in disguise. I stay away from that one.

Dr. Banning says that the more I hear and see the two words, the more I’ll become desensitized to them.

It hasn’t happened yet.

I shudder when I click into a new site. Daughter of Soda Mogul Sleeps with Soccer Team. I close out quickly and enter another webpage.

Lily Calloway Reviewed by Princeton after Allegations of Hiring Male Prostitutes.

Apparently being a frequent client of an escort service doesn’t bode well in a university’s eyes. I’m trying not to worry about it until after I talk to my parents. Tackle one issue at a time.

I make the mistake of logging onto Twitter and typing in my name. How do I make light of someone saying my vagina must be stretched and ugly? I haven’t checked lately, but I don’t think it looks that bad.

Besides, who stares at that body part and thinks, wow, that’s the most beautiful vagina I’ve ever seen? Likewise, penises are not all that pretty. I may enjoy them, but I’m not about to snap a picture and decorate my wall. Eyes are beautiful. Sex parts are functional.

My fingers click away and land on Tumblr—my bane. I’m about to search for Lily Calloway, but I hesitate above the keyboard. And on impulse I type in something bad.

Sex gifs.

The magic words open Pandora’s Box, and animated “moving” pictures cascade in an infinite scroll. Girls and guys are tangled lustfully, some positions sexier than others. And a few images are pure close-ups of naughty bits. I shouldn’t be thumbing through anything pornographic, but I begin to relax at the familiar routine.

I hover on a black and white picture with pretty shadows. The girl’s mouth forms a perfect “O” as a cock thrusts inside of her. I can’t believe it’s been two whole weeks since I’ve had sex. I try to remind myself that I lasted ninety days without Lo, no sex in sight. But that feels different than this.

After my addiction went public, Lo wavered on having sex with me. And he chose not to feed any compulsions that he thought would arise. He believes I’ll turn into a wild, sex-crazed monster. Those are actually my words, but when I said them, he never denied it. Sex has been a coping mechanism, the tool that I use to deal with tough situations. And for the first time, I have to confront a hard-hitting issue without a boost of my natural high.

It’s not like we haven’t done things. We just haven’t done it. He fingered me the other day, and last night, he let me give him a blow job. So that was nice.

I sigh. I am desperately envious of a two-dimensional girl’s orgasm, worthy of fireworks and sparklers and red velvet cake.

Suddenly, the lock to the front door clicks, and since Ryke’s apartment resembles a flat (the living room connected to the kitchen) I have a direct view of anyone who walks towards the couch. I quickly shutdown Tumblr and log onto Hollywoodharlots.net, a site that has been incredibly gossipy about my addiction. They even snapped a blurry photo of Daisy exiting Connor’s apartment and captioned the pic: Younger Sister of Lily Calloway: Future Sex Addict?

It makes my stomach churn.

“She wasn’t hitting on you,” Lo says as the door swings open.

“Are you sure?” Ryke asks. He shuts the door and pockets his keys. “She looked like she knew where she was going.”

“She was definitely lost.”

Both shirtless with only running shorts, sweat glistens their toned bodies. Morning runs relax Lo, and all week I have been searching for my anxiety-reducing activity. But those funny positions in yoga revert my mind to sex, and meditation causes me to fantasize. So I started looking at porn again, but I’ve been economical about my usage. I won’t get carried away this time.

Lo plops down on the couch beside me, his eyes flickering to my computer screen. “You read anything interesting?”

“Besides the fact that I’ve officially screwed up my sisters’ lives…”

“Rose and Daisy can handle it,” Lo reminds me. But the whole point of pretending to be in a fake relationship for three years, of keeping this giant secret, was to avoid all of this from happening. I never wanted to hurt anyone.

“I re-watched the SNL skit,” I admit. “I think I found it funnier the second time around.” On Saturday, a comedian impersonated me. She drank so many cans of Fizz that she acted drunk and stumbled into a brothel. A few humorous quips later and I sufficiently turned into a caricature.

“You have to admit, the comedian nailed your hair perfectly,” Ryke says with a grin.

“Yeah, but she gave me a terrible accent.” I don’t have a regional dialect, but she layered on a thick, obnoxious Philly drawl. I’ve also zeroed-in on the least offending thing about the entire skit.

“To her credit, she’s probably never heard you speak.”

“Whose side are you on?” I ask him, but I already know the answer. If anyone has been making it easier to make light of the situation, it’s Ryke and Lo.

“I think your first press release should be in that accent,” Lo tells me. “How funny would it be if everyone thinks you actually speak like that?”

I smile. It would be a good prank.

Lo leans over to grab my computer. “Let me see this for a second,” he says.

My guard rises and fear spikes. I grip the console as if I’m trying to protect a fairy kingdom from goblin invasion. “What? Why?”

He edges back a little bit, eyes narrowed with skepticism. “I want to see if my dad had a press conference yet.” It must be hard to stay silent towards his father throughout all of this, but it’s probably best that they’re not on speaking terms. Jonathan Hale has always been Lo’s trigger to drink.

“Uh…I can check.” I type quickly into the search engine. It’s not that I have anything incriminating on here, but I fear random pop-ups from a porn site that I visited yesterday. When the time is right, I plan on telling Lo that I’ve found a way to be a healthy porn-watcher. Definitely not now, though.

“No,” I tell Lo after a couple minutes. “He hasn’t even released a statement.” Same as my parents. I wonder if they’re both waiting to speak to their children first.

And right as I turn, the computer leaves my hands. Lo sets the device on the coffee table. My heart slows down when his lips touch mine, and then it speeds up again when his hands dip to my waist. I lose myself to the way his tongue slides into my mouth and the way he sucks on my bottom lip. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Ryke entering the living room and bending in front of my computer.

Oh no.

I’ve been tricked!

I pull back abruptly, my bottom lip caught between Lo’s teeth. I tug away and jump off the couch, charging for my laptop before Ryke can. But Lo grabs me by the hips and throws me over his shoulder. Oh man.

“Hey!” I yell, lifting my body off of Lo by pressing my hand on his back. “That’s mine.” Ryke doesn’t seem to care. He takes the laptop casually and sits back against the couch. “Lo, put me down!”

He pats my ass. “You don’t like it up here?”

“Are you taking me to the bedroom?” I ask, rethinking my dislike of hanging upside down. If it ends with me on a bed and having crazy sex, then I wouldn’t complain.

“No, love.”

“I can give you head,” I offer.

“I’m still in the room, Lily,” Ryke reminds me, his eyes on my computer screen. I flush only a little. I have become terrifyingly more comfortable mentioning sex around Ryke.

“You don’t care, do you?” I ask Ryke, egging him on a bit. He has my computer after all.

“I care,” Lo replies instead. “It’s almost noon.”

“That’s why they call it a nooner.”

“No, Lil.”

I clench my teeth, hating that I’m making him say the word no over and over. I should be better like I was in Cancun. But ever since the leak, I feel like I’ve regressed a little. I just…need to figure out how to return to where I was, but finding that path proves harder every day.

Ryke taps the keyboard, the clicking incessant while his eyes dance around the screen. “I don’t really understand why you’re so fucking obsessed with blow jobs anyway. You’re a sex addict. What the hell do they do for you?”

“Ryke,” Lo snaps.

“What? It’s an honest fucking question.”

I don’t want to tell Ryke the truth. That before I dated Lo, it was just a means to an end. Foreplay. Getting a guy hard. Pure and simple. Now, since I’m not even allowed to be on top (lest I become too compulsive) giving head is really the only thing that makes me feel in control. And I just really, really like making Lo come.

I smile at the thought.

“You’re not going to answer me?” Ryke asks. “I thought we were friends now.”

I may be comfortable saying some things in front of him but definitely not that. “What are you doing on my computer then?” I ask. “And why am I being held hostage?” I try to wiggle out of Lo’s grip.

He slides me down to my feet, and before I dart to the computer, his arms slip around my waist again, pinning my chest to his. He stares past me, and disappointment and dread begin to fill his amber-colored eyes.

What? I crane my neck over my shoulder. Ryke grimaces at something on the screen. My heart flip-flops and somersaults. “What’s wrong?” I say in a small voice.

“Your history is fucking filthy,” Ryke tells me in a serious tone.

But…that’s impossible. I clear my history. All the time. Lo lets go of me, cold replacing his warmth, which stings the most. I stay frozen by the coffee table, and he joins Ryke on the couch, scanning the long list.

“I don’t understand…” I mutter.

“I checked your history yesterday,” Lo says, his eyes grazing the screen like Ryke’s. “It was all erased. I thought that was suspicious. So I told Ryke this morning, and he said there’s a backup installed on expensive computers to revive it.” He finally meets my gaze, and before he speaks this time, I interject.

“I can explain,” I say quickly. “I started looking at it a few days ago, but only for a few minutes at a time. I’m learning how to portion control. I was going to tell you after I talked to my parents. It’s a good thing actually. I can watch it like a normal person now.” My voice becomes unnaturally high.

Ryke, surprisingly, keeps quiet and turns to Lo.

I’ve already framed his response. He won’t condone my porn usage, that I’m sure, but he’ll tell me he understands how hard it is for me and that I have to do better. I wait for his sympathetic words.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” Lo says with edge, “because that was your last time on the internet.”

My mouth falls open, too shocked to speak. He closes my computer and snatches it from Ryke’s lap. I imagine him tossing it in the trash, and my voice suddenly reanimates. “Waitwaitwait!” I throw up my hands. “I have school. I need to write papers and do research.”

Lo walks to a cabinet and places my laptop inside. “Then I’ll sit with you when you do them, but obviously you can’t be trusted with a computer right now.” His eyes hit mine. “Have you been looking at porn on your phone?”

I stare at the cabinet in a fog. I can’t believe this is happening. Lo has never practiced tough love with me. The only love I know is either the sweet kind or the kind that makes me come.

“Lily!”

I blink. “A little.”

His chest rises and falls heavily, hurt or angry or maybe a bit of both. “There is no a little,” he says roughly. “It’s either yes or no.”

I shake my head. “I was making it work,” I defend.

“Porn is not like sex. You’re not allowed to look at the photos for an hour and be done.”

“Why not?” I ask. “If I’m not being compulsive about it—”

“You’re addicted. It doesn’t feel like a compulsion now. But two days later that hour on your computer turns into three. A week later, you’re losing sleep to the habit. Then in a month, all your free fucking time is consumed by checking your phone, logging onto websites, falling asleep to movies. Lily…” He walks over and cups my face, brushing fallen tears from my eyes. “I have watched porn eat away your time and your life. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

Before I can wrap my head around my feelings, his hand slips into my back pocket, and he retrieves my cell phone. “On the way to your parents, we’ll stop and buy you a flip phone. One that doesn’t have internet.”

He slides the cell into his own pocket. His eyes fall to mine, still serious.

“Have you been masturbating?”

I feel the heat of my rash-like embarrassment flooding my face. I glance hesitantly at Ryke, not wanting to discuss any of this with him in the room. They have banded together, and I can’t deny that Ryke has made Lo stronger.

“Lily, you asked to give me head in front of him,” Lo reminds me. “You can’t be embarrassed now.”

“I’m not…I haven’t.” I don’t mention how I’ve contemplated the act and almost succumbed to the temptation (more than once) in the shower.

“You promise?” he asks, still disbelieving. “Because there are ways I can check. I could smell your fingers right now or go through your box of toys.”

I scowl. My stomach turns in a mixture of anger and hurt. “You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“This…” He motions from me to him. “Us. We can’t work unless we’re honest with one another. You’ll be able to tell if I drink, but Lil, I’ll have no idea if you’ve relapsed until it’s too late. I don’t want there to be distrust between us.”

“I don’t either.”

“Then talk to me,” he urges. “Don’t reach the point where you’re watching porn or masturbating again to speak up. It’s not okay, Lil.”

He’s right, but that doesn’t make hearing those words, from him, any easier. Maybe I need a good kick in the ass though.

Ryke clears his throat from the couch, and Lo rolls his eyes dramatically. He grabs his wallet from the table and fishes out a twenty. Ryke smirks as he takes the bill.

“Did you bet on me?” I ask, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” Lo says, unabashed. His eyes fall to mine. “And I’ll always bet on your side.”

He probably suspected I had watched porn all along too. I should be more offended that they bet on my addiction, but it lightens the mood and helps me not curl up in a ball of guilt.

“And I’ll gladly take your money,” Ryke tells him.

No way. The prospect of Ryke winning off my failure motivates me to do better.

I open my mouth, about to tell Ryke that he’ll never win again, but a glimmer in the window catches my eye. I sidle to the panes and peer through.

Across the street, a van has pulled onto the curb. Cameras flash, the lens directed at Ryke’s living room. I duck to the floor. How did they find us?

Lo sees me hugging the hardwood, and he comes over to glance out the window. I shoo him with my hand. “Cameras,” I say.

He squints in confusion and then quickly grabs the remote. He flips on the television while Ryke hops over the coffee table and comes to my aid. He snags the blinds, and they close the room in afternoon darkness.

A familiar voice blares through the sound system, and my head whips to the flat-screen.

“I spent an entire week with her during Spring Break.”

Oh. My. God.

I go to Lo’s side in a daze and plop on the couch. Melissa talks candidly with a camera crew outside of what appears to be Ryke’s apartment complex.

“And what was she like?” the news anchor asks.

Melissa let out a short laugh. “Wild.”

“Liar!” I yell and grab a pillow from the couch, ready to fling it against the television.

Ryke points a finger at me. “Do not break my TV.”

I motion to Melissa and her fake smile. “The one time I actually didn’t even have sex, and I’m being blasted for it. It’s not fucking fair.”

“She’s not the first person who’s been on camera lying about you,” Lo reminds me. Yesterday a kid from prep school claimed I had sex with him, and since I was particular and choosy back then, I can recall most of my high school conquests. He was definitely not among them. But this feels different. Melissa is the first person who has proof that she’s been in our company, and not only that, she’s discussing events that didn’t take place four years ago.

It happened last Friday.

As far as they know, she has no reason to lie.

The news anchor asks her to elaborate, and Melissa wears another complacent smile. “Well, let’s just say Lily and Loren Hale have an open relationship.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Loren Hale has a half-brother,” Melissa says. Yeah, the media revealed that not too long ago, and Sara Hale was finally painted as the hero, divorced out of adultery, which she was forced to keep quiet after the end of her marriage. She’s no longer the money-grubbing gold digger that my own mother used to call her. Although, I suspect my mom still knew the truth about Jonathan’s cheating all along like my father did.

“Do you know who his half-brother is?” the anchor questions.

Ryke’s identity has not been confirmed. By anyone yet.

“Of course,” Melissa says. “He tells almost everyone that he’s related to Loren Hale. I think he likes being associated to money.”

Ryke rolls his eyes and sits on the armrest of the couch beside his brother.

Lo pats his back. “Nothing like a woman scorned, huh, big bro?”

“Fuck off,” Ryke says lightly.

Lo smiles, but it fades as soon as Melissa answers the news anchor’s whole question.

“His name is Ryke Meadows.”

“And there goes my anonymity,” Ryke mutters. He sighs and curses under his breath as Melissa discusses the apartment building, his affiliation to Penn and the track team…it’s a lot to digest.

“And there goes those morning runs around the block,” Lo adds.

Melissa divulges more secrets, like which coffee shops he frequents, the gyms he likes. Ryke groans his hand.

Lo’s voice softens. “You really pissed this girl off.”

“I didn’t mean to. Honestly.”

Melissa stares straight into the camera, delivering her next lie. “Lily Calloway liked to do it a lot, but especially with both of them.” She pauses. “Together.”

None of us move, not at all expecting that.

“Fucking fantastic,” Ryke breathes.

I can handle guys lying about sleeping with me. I can handle comedy skits about my sex addiction. I can handle the sluts and whores that are blasted my way. But having someone else—someone who has only helped me—being dragged into these lies, well, that sets me off.

I storm towards the door, not even caring that my hair is unwashed, that my clothes are wrinkled from all the lounging around, and that I look one second from joining the trash in a garbage can. I’m a girl with a fucking mission.

“Whoa!” Lo wraps his arms around my waist before I reach the door. “Where are you going, love?”

“To the street. I need to set things straight.” They cannot think I’ve slept with Ryke. They cannot think I’ve had sex with Lo and his brother. That is beyond wrong.

Ryke stares at me from the couch. “So your first fucking statement is going to be Melissa is a big fat fucking liar?”

“You can’t point fingers,” Lo clarifies.

“I can’t just be quiet,” I say. “This is getting bad.”

“You have to talk to your parents first,” Lo reminds me. “They have money. They have lawyers.”

But for every second that Melissa’s lie is accepted as truth is another moment where Ryke and Lo suffer because of me.

Ryke gives me an annoyed look. “You honestly think I care what people say about me?” No, he wouldn’t, but I still feel horrible. “I’m more pissed that she’s told the press where I rock climb.”

I picture lenses swarming him as he grips a mountain with his fingers, and the cameras distract him as they flash repeatedly, so much so that he tumbles to his death. I wince. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your apologies, Lily,” Ryke refutes. “I only want one thing.”

“What?”

“When your parents tell you to go to rehab, what do you say?”

We talked about this on the plane. I can’t go to rehab. That would entail leaving Lo and a brilliant therapist, both of which I love, and all of that would be replaced with anxiety-ridden group sessions. I can’t form the words Ryke wants me to until Lo laces his fingers with mine, courage filling me.

“I’m going to say…go to hell.”

Ryke tilts his head at me, appraising my tone. I said the right words, but maybe not in the most confident way. He turns to Lo.

“We’ll work on it,” Lo tells me.

I nod. At least I have their support. Ryke and Lo, as a team—for however strange that would have seemed months ago—is the best thing for me.

Just not a sexual team.

Purely chaste here.

Okay, I’ll stop now. I think porn has fried my brain. I blame Melissa! I’m going to use that excuse for the rest of the day.

I do feel a little better.

{ 35 } LILY CALLOWAY

I haven’t told my parents to “go to hell” yet, but that’s partly because they really haven’t spoken to me. When we arrived at their Villanova mansion, Lo and I were ushered into one of the dens. My parents were there, along with his father, but so were four lawyers that squeezed onto a single couch. The lawyers asked us questions, and I tried to explain everything without becoming too much of an emotional mess. I failed on multiple occasions, blubbering so much that Lo would have to finish talking for me.

But my mother and father never said a word and avoided my gaze as much as possible. They might as well have been listening from another room. The hardest part was going through the video clips that many guys posted and claimed as sex tapes. Some blurry ones I couldn’t be certain were me or not, but others were clearly fabricated. I don’t have any cute freckles on my butt.

Four hours later, my throat has swollen from talking and bearing as much of the truth as I could. We even came clean about our fake relationship. Now Lo and I wait in the living room while the lawyers and our parents deliberate about the next steps. Rose and Ryke offered to be here, but we both wanted to do this on our own.

“What if they never speak to me again?” I say, rubbing my puffy eyes. I spot Harold, our butler, walking rather quickly past the doorway with the mail in his hands. The staff, most of whom I’ve known for years, have all had the same skittish reaction around me. Like I’m contagious.

“That wouldn’t be a big change, would it?” Lo asks.

My heart twists a little at his words. They haven’t been the most active participants in my life, but I always thought it was my own doing. I purposefully alienated myself during college. But then again, my father was never around when I was a child, and my mother brushed me away pretty easily. But Rose said my mom bought self-help books to learn how to reconnect to her children, so maybe…she’s trying? I don’t think there’s a black and white answer. I think I’ve been swimming in the gray state of things for so long.

They’re still my parents. I love them because I believe they truly love me. My father has given me so much, and even if Ryke says otherwise, I can’t just abandon this life with my family or walk away from what I did. I don’t want to be that insolent child, stomping on my parent’s livelihood and then telling them to clean it up. It’s my fault. I need to take responsibility.

I just hope that I haven’t done irreparable damage—to the company, our family, and my relationship with them.

“It’s going to be weird talking to them through lawyers,” I rephrase. “It’s already weird.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of bullshit,” he agrees and takes my hand in his. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together. You and me.”

“Lily and Lo,” I say with a weak smile. It hurts to lift my lips, but I try my best. I’ve avoided this day for a week now, and every minute I’m here reminds me of all the harm I’ve caused.

He kisses my cheek and the doors to the den open. The lawyers and our parents file out in a large wave. I haven’t been able to apologize to either my mother or father. Every time I tried to digress from the lawyers’ questions, they snapped me back on track with a sharp tone. I fear this may be my only chance.

I walk quickly around the couch, my parents heading in the opposite direction down the long narrow hallway. “Mom!” I shout, scooting past one of Jonathan’s burly lawyers.

She doesn’t look back. “Mom!” I yell again, nearly reaching her as I walk faster. She ignores me, and I rest my hand on her shoulder to stop her.

She spins around on her heels, my father padding ahead.

Her cold eyes puncture me, filled more with malice than anything else, and it takes me a moment to remember what I was even doing in the first place.

I stumble back a little. “I’m sorry,” I choke. “I’m so sorry.”

“You can be sorry all you want,” she says with a chill. She touches her pearls across her sharp collarbone. “It won’t repair the damage you have done to this family.” She takes a step forward, and I take one step back so we don’t bump chests. “You have everything a girl could ever want, and you had to spread your legs for every boy who gave you an ounce of attention. I didn’t raise you to be so disgusting.”

Tears cloud my eyes, and I disobey my therapist’s orders and internalize everything she says. I deserve her hate. I’ve ruined everything my father has ever created. Years and years of hard work have been tarnished by me and my stupid fucking decisions.

Her eyes flit to Lo as he comes to my side. Coldness blankets me, and my hand feels numb to his palm. My mother looks him over in one long gaze before she says, “You could do better.”

I try to disentangle my hand from his, but he grips fiercely, holding on. Tears spill down my cheeks as I focus on prying each one of his fingers off mine. He directs his attention to my mother.

“You don’t know us,” he says. “If you did, you would realize how guilty she already feels, so stop tearing her down.”

I shake my head. He doesn’t get it. I want to hear her anger and disappointment. I’m so tired of people telling me it’s okay when it’s not. It’s not okay that my little sister is being theorized as a future sex addict. It’s not okay that my father’s company has lost investors. I don’t want to lock myself in an apartment and pretend that everything is fine anymore.

There is no one else to blame but me.

Lo squeezes my hand with extra force, making it impossible for me to let go.

My mother purses her lips. “It’s late. You both need to talk with the lawyers.” She spins on her heels, and they clap all the way down the hall.

I breathe in sporadic, choppy inhales, and my head spins so much that my vision starts to whirl with it. Lo presses his hands to my cheeks, cupping my face with strength that I do not possess. Months ago, he’d probably leave me on a bench in the hallway to go collect bottles from the liquor cabinet. Now that he’s here, I try to ingest some of his power to stand upright. But all I see is a boy who’s good and whole and a girl who’s broken and weak.

I want to be him.

I want that.

But those are my parents. And they hate me.

I think I hate myself more.

“Lily,” he says, very softly. “You’re going to have a panic attack if you don’t slow your breaths.”

Going to? This isn’t a panic attack?

“Lily,” he snaps. “Breathe. Slowly.”

I try and listen to him and focus on his chest, the way it rises and falls in a stable pattern. When my lungs feel less strained and my breath steadies, we both turn to the team of lawyers who linger in the corridor. Exhaustion sags their eyes, and they each hold stacks of papers that they’ll be sifting through for the next forty-eight hours.

The head lawyer, Arthur, holds the largest stack. “We need to discuss what should happen in the upcoming weeks.”

I don’t know what my parents have decided to do. Send me to rehab? Fly me to Switzerland? I’m supposed to tell them to go to hell, but after confronting my mother, all I want to do is make this right.

And that means giving in to whatever they want. Whatever they need. I’ll repair the damage I’ve done.

Jonathan Hale steps forward, already clutching a crystal glass of scotch. Surprisingly, like my parents, he didn’t utter a word during our briefing in the den. “I can take it from here, Arthur,” he says easily. “I think Loren and Lily have had enough of this intermediary bullshit.”

Arthur sways on his feet, hesitant to leave.

“You don’t need to relay information,” Jonathan snaps. “You need to get your ass back to your office and make phone calls and fact check the hell out of those stories. It’s time for you to go. Now.”

They disperse quickly, and Arthur hands Jonathan a couple files before he leaves. A burst of envy pops in my chest, and I’m frightened that I covet Lo’s father and want to trade mine in for the Jonathan Hale version, wishing mostly that my dad could be more supportive.

The world has gone mad.

Jonathan looks to us. “We should do this at my house. The staff here is getting on my last goddamn nerve.” On cue, one of the groundskeepers walks into the house from the back door and then speeds off in another direction. Jonathan mumbles something that sounds like ridiculous motherfuckers. But I really can’t be certain.

The farther I am from this house, the better, even if it means that we have to drive through mobs of camera crews again. Lo and I climb into my car, and before he puts it in drive, he faces me.

“I have to tell you something, and you’re probably going to be mad.”

I frown, not having a clue where this could go. I watch Jonathan’s car exit the gates, cameras flashing and clicking, the light glinting off the tinted windows.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice smaller than I like.

He licks his lips, guilt lining his face. Uh oh. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen my father since rehab.”

The truth washes over me in a freezing cold wave. I shiver and nod, letting this sink in fully. Okay. He’s lied. But he just opened up, so that has to count for something, right? Still, no matter how much I make excuses for him, I can’t help the sadness that pours into me.

I lift my legs to the seat and bury my head in my knees, hiding from Lo, not the paparazzi.

“Lil,” he says, his hand hovering above my head, hesitant to touch me. “Say something.”

I can’t speak, the words tangle, swollen in a pit midway up my throat. So Lo pulls the car out and navigates past the cameras. He explains his conversations with his father and how he went to him specifically to find the blackmailer and to learn more about his mother.

By the time we reach the street, away from the paparazzi and news vans, he has finished spilling all these secrets. After a long tense silence, he asks, “Are you mad?”

“No,” I say softly, silent tears streaming down my cheeks. I don’t lift my head from my knees. I’m just sad. I should have known and busted him like he did me. He was able to go to rehab and come back a little stronger than before. I didn’t have that. When he returned, I started back at day one, trying to figure out how to cope with my addiction and him in the same room. And I’m just realizing how much of a rock he is for me, and how much I may have let him down if he relapsed and I didn’t stop him sooner.

“Lily, please talk to me.” He tails Jonathan’s car and slows down when we reach the gate.

“Did you drink?” I murmur.

“No, I promise, Lil. I mean…”

My chest collapses. I don’t like I means.

“…I thought about it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’m on Antabuse,” he says. “The idea of vomiting stopped me more than once. Being around my father does make me want to drink. I can’t deny that.” He pauses “But I’m at a point where I can say no.” At least he’s being honest now.

I raise my head, rubbing my cheeks on my sleeve. “You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d disapprove.”

He nods. “But Lil, he’s my dad. He’s my fucking family.”

I can’t tell him what I think. That even if his father shows heart one minute, he’ll cut Lo into pieces the next. I’ve seen Lo walk away a shell of himself after his father screamed at his face for half an hour.

He parks the car and lifts my hand. “You’re my family too.” He kisses my knuckles. “Always.” He wipes a stray tear. “Please don’t be upset over this.”

“I just don’t want to see him hurt you,” I say softly.

“He won’t.”

Lo is not built of armor. He goes into every fight without the padding. He lets people hurt him because he believes he deserves that pain. It’s sick. It’s something I think I’m coping with right now.

I breathe heavily and just nod. “Okay.” I feel so ripped open. The extra dagger just fits in place with the others. I have to believe that Lo will be fine in the face of his father, that he can handle all the verbal onslaughts and the sudden disparaging comments. The why aren’t you living to your potential? Why are you such a fucking disappointment? I have to believe he’s stronger than me.

I think I can do that.

We enter the house, and I skid to a stop by the grand staircase, absorbing a home that I spent most of my childhood in. It’s quieter and darker than my parent’s place and carries a somber quality. Maybe because I have more memories here. And not all of them good.

“Can we do this in the morning?” I ask. Postponing the inevitable sounds nice. I could take another sleeping pill too, or Lo might even go down on me tonight. I shouldn’t be thinking about sex right now. I shake my head to try to reset it. I’m a spin-cycle revolving backwards.

Lo strokes my hair. “My father is impatient.”

Oh, right. He leads me to his father’s office where I’ve been many times before. Jonathan is already pouring himself scotch when we walk in. I settle on the brown leather sofa, and Lo scoots close beside me.

I remember kissing Lo on this couch. We’d have these hot and heavy make-out sessions, complete with over-the-clothes caressing, just to be caught by Jonathan or the staff. We weren’t really together, but we made excuses to kiss each other. We said that we were “reinforcing our relationship,” even though it was just pretend. I liked the stroking and the groping more than I should. And Lo did too, I suppose. He just never declared, outright, that he wanted to be with me.

Jonathan lingers by the liquor cart, examining his bottles. “Greg and I agreed not to speak during the briefing. If it felt formal, it’s only because we didn’t want the thing to last all fucking night.” He raises a crystal bottle of amber-colored liquid. “Would you like a glass or are you still being obnoxious?”

“No thanks,” Lo says, his voice firm.

Jonathan returns the bottle and slumps in the plush leather chair behind his desk. He shuffles the three files out along his desk as he takes a slow sip from his glass.

“From here on out, the goal for both of you is to reform your images. You will become upstanding individuals who can proudly wear your last fucking name.” He flips open a file and scans the page. “We’ll start with Lily. The easiest solution would be to deny all the claims, but no one would believe that sixty men were lying.”

I already knew I couldn’t deny the accusations, and I wouldn’t want to. Most are true. I wait for the word, the one that will seal my fate—rehab.

“So your parents and the lawyers have drawn up a list of things you must do. It’ll help restore your reputation, and in effect, that of our companies. Simple, easy, seamless, yada fucking yada.”

“What if she doesn’t do them?” Lo asks.

Jonathan shoots him a sharp look. “I was getting there. Hold your fucking tongue for a second.” His eyes fall to me. “Starting today, you no longer have access to your trust fund. When you complete all the tasks, your inheritance will be restored to you in full.”

My money is gone.

I’m broke. Just like Lo.

I wish I could talk to my parents. I would have completed their list without putting my financial security up as collateral. The guilt motivates me enough.

Jonathan stares at Lo, and I know he wants him to ask for his own trust fund back, especially now that we’re both penniless. But Lo remains resolute and tight-lipped.

His father switches his attention back to me. “I must admit, your father didn’t like this idea all that much. He preferred you keep your trust fund, but your mother convinced him otherwise.” I wonder why Jonathan tells me this; maybe to vouch for his best friend. I’m not sure.

“What’s on the list?” I ask softly. “Do I have to leave?”

Jonathan lets out a short laugh. “Running away doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it makes you look guilty. No, you’ll stay in the city, preferably Princeton after the lawyers get done with the university.”

I’m not going to be expelled? Hope surges through me, only to be smothered by Jonathan’s next words. “You will apologize publicly during a press conference, and you will start seeing a psychiatrist handpicked by your parents.” He narrows his eyes at the list. “They also want you to stop visiting bars and clubs, but really, the three of us in this room can agree that you can go, just don’t be seen. This is about your image not a fucking path to morality.”

He taps his pen on the folder. “The most important and last item on the list…” He reaches into his suit jacket and reveals a small black box. I don’t look at Lo. My eyes zone in on the case as Jonathan opens the lid, a shiny diamond ring inside. “Congratulations,” Jonathan says, his voice more rough than enthusiastic. “You’re now engaged, and the wedding will be held in a year.”

My joints don’t work properly, even though all my thoughts scream violently for me to take the ring. It’s a small price to pay for what I’ve done. But to turn what Lo and I have into bait for the media, cheapening our love, hurts beyond words.

More tears pool.

“Lil,” Lo says, squeezing my hand. “We can find another way.”

We can’t.

This is what they want, and we’ve been selfish long enough. I shake my head, grab the box and pluck out the ring that glitters as I slide it between my fingers. It’s larger and more extravagant than anything I’d ever want. I take a small breath and slide it onto my finger.

It fits perfectly.

I can’t stop staring at the way it sparkles and dwarfs my small hand. It’s gaudy and feels cold and wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Lo. He’s fixated on the piece of jewelry as much as me, and I already know what he’s thinking. This isn’t what he imagined for us either, a proposal by his father in his office.

Maybe…maybe we’re just not meant to have a happy ending.

Maybe we don’t deserve it.

{ 36 } LOREN HALE

When I was in rehab, I had plenty of free time to let my mind wander. Stupidly, I started thinking about how I would propose to Lily. Not any time soon, but when we were both healthy and happy. I even envisioned the ring I would buy her—a small pink sapphire. Simple, non-traditional. I think she would have liked it.

Now I’ll never know.

I glare at my father, hating that he has hijacked my proposal. It’s not entirely his fault, but if we’re being coerced into marriage, I’d rather have something on my terms. He could have given me a day’s notice. Anything.

Instead, I’m going to shelve this memory with all of my other black, inky tarred ones, ruined by something larger and nastier than me. Lily quietly appraises the ring with sad eyes. I wish I could fix this, but rejecting her parent’s pleas will hurt her more. The shame she caused is tearing her from the inside out, and doing nothing to repair the damage would rip her soul.

“The wedding,” I say, breaking the tense silence. “You said it’s in a year.”

My father nods and sips his scotch.

I itch to taste it, but I focus more on Lil, and any ache for alcohol subsides. For once, I truly feel strong enough to help her. “She has to complete all the tasks before her trust fund is returned. Does that mean she’ll have it again when she agrees to the wedding?”

“She gets it when you’re married.”

My stomach caves. A year? She’ll be broke for a whole fucking year even if she does everything they say. Lily can’t hold down a job while she’s going through recovery. I remember how I found her hiding underneath her desk in Rose’s office, afraid of the male models. She’s not ready to handle the stress of a workplace environment with her addiction at bay. That anxiety is what causes her to go crazy.

“We’ll get married sooner,” I offer. Why prolong the wait? She’ll have money. The cameras will stop hounding us. She won’t be gossiped about in blogs anymore. All will be right again.

“Really?” Lily asks, her eyes big and glassy.

I wipe a fallen tear with my thumb. “Two weeks or one year, it doesn’t make a difference to me, Lil. I’d marry you tomorrow if it’d make you happy.”

She nods once and lets me hold her close.

“It actually does make a difference,” my father cuts in, chilling my bones. “It can’t look like a shotgun wedding designed to coax the media. It has to look real. One year. No sooner and no later.”

He strangled my only alternative.

My father closes a file and opens another. “Now for you, Loren,” he says, “the media has modeled you as the pathetic boyfriend, cheated on and discarded. You will publicly release a statement about how you and Lily have had an open relationship, something new age. You have been sleeping around with other women, and you knew she was sleeping with other men. But since your romantic engagement, you both have decided to commit to each other fully.”

Lily holds in a breath, probably believing I’ll refuse this stipulation. She wants this to be easy, for us to agree and move on. I’m accustomed to lies. If this one helps, I’ll gladly carry it. I nod in acceptance and my father closes the file.

“That’s it?” I ask.

“You’re not the sex addict,” he reminds me with a dry smile and the raise of his glass. He takes a long swig, and my mind lapses back to the money issue.

I have to ask him.

For Lily.

For me.

So we have one less problem to solve. So we can stop taking handouts from our siblings.

“About my trust fund…”

Lily bristles beside me. “Lo, you don’t have to—”

“I want to.” Whatever the repercussions, whatever I have to do to please my father, I’ll work out. A part of me screams failure. I’m giving up by crawling back to this man. But the other part says this is the right way. And I’m listening to that side of my brain. Whether it’s the dumb fucking side—that’s to be seen.

“What about it?” He swirls the scotch in his glass, creating a small whirlpool.

He’ll make me ask. Beg. Plead and grovel. I’m not about to drop to my knees, but I’m close. I’m almost there. “You told me I could have it back,” I remind him, but I’m not an idiot. I know there are strings attached. “What do you want me to do?” Not college. Not college. Not college. I cannot go back to school, surrounded by booze, surrounded by fully functioning twenty-somethings. It drives me to a bottle more than Lily knows. It’s a reason why I opted not to return.

Every sane, happy person is like a reflection of what I could have been, like being met with Christmas Future every day. I don’t want to be haunted by my problems like that.

“What I want you to do,” he says, “is be a fucking man.”

I glare. “Last time I checked, I was one.”

“Having a dick doesn’t make you a man,” he replies. “You’ve been an irresponsible little boy all your life. I give you things and you shit on them. If you want your trust fund, you have to use the money to make something of yourself. You can’t fuck it away.”

“I’m not going back to college.”

“Did I say anything about college? You’re not even listening to me.” He throws back the rest of the liquor into his mouth and smacks the glass on the desk.

I flinch.

And he stays silent, not about to divulge the details. Apparently I’m supposed to know what being a man really entails. In my father’s head, that could mean anything.

“Okay,” I accept blindly. He just wants me to meet my potential, not squander away his wealth with apathy. His terms should be in my power. Hopefully.

His brows jump in swift surprise, but it slowly washes away, replaced with a true, genuine smile. I think I just made my father happy.

That happens…well, almost never.

“I’ll call the lawyers. Your inheritance will be back by tomorrow morning,” he says, “and I expect a business proposal by next week.”

“A what?” My stomach tightens.

He rolls his eyes and his mouth downturns. That smile lasted point-two seconds. “For Christ’s sake, Loren. A business proposal. You don’t have to be involved in my company, but you better create your own. I don’t even fucking care if it succeeds. Just get off your lazy ass.” He stands and hovers over the liquor cart to refill his empty glass. “It’s late. You two should spend the night here.”

I don’t want to step into my old bedroom, a haven for bad memories and shitty mistakes. I shake my head. “We’re staying at Ryke’s tonight.”

He stiffens at the name. “Then get going. I have work to do.” As we walk towards the doors, he says, “And when I find the leak, he’s going to wish he never fucked with our family. I can promise you that.”

{ 37 } LILY CALLOWAY

We’re all back at the Princeton house, and I haven’t spoken to Rose in three days. She leaves the house early and returns late. And every time I call, her automated message clicks. Usually Rose answers on the second ring.

H&M and Macy’s dropped Calloway Couture from their stores, citing the “negative attention” as reason to pull the garments from the hangers and shelves. I apologized over text, and I caught her once in person to utter the words, but she patted me on the shoulder and said something about a meeting and hopped into her car.

She texted me this morning. I’m just busy, and I’m sorry I don’t have more time to talk. I don’t blame you. Keep your head up. – Rose

I’m not feeling very sprightly today, but the text helps ease the weight on my chest. My last test is today before finals start next week, and it marks the first time I’ll set foot on campus since the scandal. I shouldn’t go. I didn’t study or memorize the answers from old exams. I just plopped on the couch and watched reruns of Boy Meets World.

My limbs sag heavily, an anchor that tethers me to the bed, to the floor, to the couch. Morning, noon, and night. The urge to disappear, a superpower that I have always wanted, strikes me more often. Dr. Banning would tell me that I’m depressed, maybe even prescribe medication for me. But I haven’t spoken to her since my meeting with the lawyers.

I’m not allowed to see her. I have a new psychiatrist now. Dr. Oliver Evans. I’ll meet him next week.

The shower is my one solitude: a place where self-love exists, where the steam and my prickling nerves combust and ward off anxiety. The guilt accompanies the high. And IknowIknowIknow. I’m technically not allowed, but I’m monitoring how long I spend touching myself. This isn’t the same thing as porn. I can’t masturbate in public. I’ll never overdo it if I just restrict myself to self-love shower time.

And anyway, after last night’s attempt to have sex, Lo will probably steer clear of me for a good thousand years. It started fine. I was ridiculously excited to finally sleep with him after two weeks of abstinence. The hour sped, tricking my mind into believing we only fooled around for five whole minutes, not sixty. I needed more time.

He kept telling me no. And I even tried to spider him and ensnare him in my sex web, which (now that I think about it) couldn’t have been all that sexy. I turned into the compulsive sex-monster that we both feared. Then, something worse happened.

I burst into tears.

So not only did I whine for sex, but I cried when I didn’t get it. I’m ashamed to the point of reclusiveness. I never want to show my face, to anyone. I don’t blame Lo if he never wants to sleep in the same bed with me ever again.

I glance at the kitchen clock. Lo and Ryke can no longer run at the Penn track or jog down the block without being bombarded by paparazzi or nosy students. So they’ve resorted to sprinting around the land at our house in Princeton. At least it’s gated.

But they shouldn’t come inside for another ten minutes. My damp hair wets my shirt. I think I can squeeze in one more shower before they enter the house. I hop off the bar stool and race to the bathroom. I retrieve a small bag of tampons from a cabinet in the way way back. Stuffed in between all of them is a pouch with my waterproof mini-vibrator. I take it out and shove the bag back.

Shower or bathtub?

I hate that we don’t have a combo bathtub-shower scenario. This would be a lot easier then. Self-love standing up is not my favorite, and that’s what I’ve had to do in the shower.

The bathtub calls me. Bubbles. I can have bubbles too. But I only have…ten minutes. I think I can make it work. Bubbles have to be worth it.

Quickly, I turn the faucet, test the water for the perfect warmth, and squirt in bubble mix (of course) and toss in one of those pink soap balls (not really sure what they do). The water swishes into a pale pink hue, and I breathe in the flowery aroma, the scent pretty close to lilies.

So I call it a success.

I shed my clothes and sink into the water, gasping at the way the warmness skims my thighs and up to my breasts. I hold the vibrator in one hand, anticipation and glee filling me first. I close my eyes, lean back, and let my mind wander while my hand moves.

I focus on a particular memory, one with Lo during our sophomore year of college. We were roped into attending my parent’s holiday party back at their Villanova mansion. Since we planned on spending the night, we both decided to get drunk off the eggnog. My mother shooed us upstairs so we didn’t disrupt any of the other guests, and we locked ourselves in my room for the rest of the night.

Standing by the foot of the bed, he kissed my neck and lips with an intoxicating gaze, inhaling every part of me, a look that devoured my body in a single second. Even though we were alone, he didn’t stop.

I was aroused. He was drunk. And he gladly lent me his mouth, and I accepted (at first) because my mind was on a super rush. His lips pressed against my collarbone, tender and then deep, sucking. His fingers slid down my waist, lower and lower.

“Lo.” I let out a ragged breath and tried to hold onto his white button-down, trying to keep my body upright. But the world was dancing, and I wanted nothing more than to be swept up in it—preferably with a thrust and a high.

He retracted and held my cheeks, his amber eyes carrying a strong haze, but not enough for him to be completely gone to booze. He was still with me. Here. For now.

I was sure I resembled the sloppy drunk between the two of us.

“Lily.” His lips lifted into a crooked grin. “How do you feel?”

“Wobbly,” I admitted. “And horny.” The alcohol repressed any embarrassment because I added, “Really horny, actually.” But I couldn’t find a one-night stand at my parent’s intimate party. Besides the fact that most were in their fifties, the few young people knew my family too well. I was not in the market to scatter rumors that I cheated on Loren Hale. We were still pretending to be a couple, after all.

He kept smiling. “Is that how you get guys hard? Blunt honesty?”

My eyes immediately fell to his groin. “It doesn’t seem to be working on you,” I countered. I slipped out of his arms and found his stowaway of Macallan in my desk drawer. I uncapped it and took a quick swig. His face darkened, and he yanked the bottle away from me. He put the rim to his lips and drank a large gulp, his throat bobbing three times.

He set the bottle back on the desk. “You’re always horny. I’d have an eternal hard-on if that’s all it took.”

My mind started to wander to sinful places, thinking about what exactly would get Loren Hale off. But this was Lo. My best friend. A relationship I couldn’t devalue with a quick lay. We’ve crossed lines a few times before, but I was determined to never jump over the ultimate line—the one that ends with him inside of me, with the highest, brightest climax.

“I usually don’t say things,” I admitted. “I just do things.”

He gave me a bitter smile. “I bet you give a spectacular blow job.”

I was about to offer one, but I remembered who he was and my throat went dry again. I held out my hand for the Macallan. “Hit me,” I said.

He laughed as he pressed the bottle to his lips again. “Cute.” He took another long sip. He was always so territorial over his booze.

I stomped back over to the drawer and fished out an airplane bottle of vodka.

He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have anything to chase that with, big shot.”

I shrugged, screwed off the cap, and tossed the liquor back in my throat.

“Hey!” he shouted and rushed to my side just as the liquid burned its way down my esophagus. I coughed roughly. I’m on fucking fire, I thought. He snatched the bottle away from me but eighty percent was already invading my stomach.

My nose crinkled in disgust. “Why do you do that?” I asked. I’ve seen him drink straight liquor. I rub my hand on my tongue, trying to rid the taste. Ugh.

He just laughed and let me complain for a few minutes, and then the alcohol slowly began to warp my mind, turning my lustful thoughts on overdrive. I craved touch. For hands to slide up and down my legs and thighs.

I plopped on the edge of the bed, my eyes drifting over Lo, falling to his ass as he stared out the window, mesmerized by the twinkling Christmas lights and the flutter of snow.

I wanted sex.

I wanted to feel as good as he was feeling. Alcohol made him relaxed, at ease, and I yearned for that type of temperate peace.

“Lo,” I breathed. “Are we still pretending?”

His eyes met mine. “I’ll be sleeping in your room tonight because we’re supposed to be dating. So…yes.”

“Can I do something?” My eyelids felt heavy from the liquor, and hopefully my voice was not so slurred.

He didn’t even hesitate. “Sure,” he said. “I can wait in your father’s study. I don’t think there’s anyone there.”

He moved towards the door, about to give me privacy for self-love. But that’s not what I wanted. “Wait,” I called out, my heart beating rapidly. His feet halted in the middle of the floor, and he spun around, facing me with the tilt of his head.

“You can stay,” I told him. “Right there. Just…stay right there.”

I slid underneath the covers and tried to avoid his gaze as I fumbled with my dress. I pulled the fabric over my head and threw it to the floor—along with my panties. I had enough sense to keep my strapless bra on at least. Not that it was covering much.

Now situated, I looked back at him. An amused expression danced across his face. “How drunk are you?” he asked.

Truthfully, I hoped I wouldn’t remember doing this in the morning. That didn’t end up happening though. “Enough,” I said. Enough to touch myself in front of you.

He licked his bottom lip and held up the bottle to his mouth. He waited to see if I’d go through with it. My fingers dipped between my legs, finding the soft, wet spot that ached for touch. My breath deepened as soon as my fingers pulsed along my clit, and I basked in the way it lit up my core.

I stared longingly at his pants, imagining his cock that I never really saw during our college years. I never wanted his penis to spike my temptations, so I avoided eye contact with it most days. But that night, I didn’t care about any of that. Sex was on my mind, and it wanted something more.

His fingers traveled to the button on his pants, and my breath hitched as he pushed it slowly through the hole.

I looked at him questioningly. What was he doing?

“If you want to watch me while you get yourself off,” he said, “you might as well do it the right way, love.” He tugged down his pants to his ankles and slowly stepped out of them. My mouth hung open, and I stopped moving my own fingers in shock.

He was hard.

Not completely, but definitely more firm than before. His tight black boxer-briefs exposed every muscle and curve and of course the bulge that I fixated on.

“Keep going,” he urged.

My fingers reignited at his words, and I moved them faster, my hips writhing and pumping in animation. His cock slowly grew. I was beckoning it to me, like I had become a little snake charmer. I loved that control…that power.

I stole a glance and caught Lo drinking in my features, the way my lips parted and my eyes fluttered back. But when we locked gazes, I dropped my focus, his hand disappearing below the hem of his boxer-briefs.

A moan caught in my throat as I watched him rub himself beneath the fabric. I couldn’t see his cock, not really, but that felt even sexier. More sinful and wrong and just about right.

His heavy breath became deep and rough, as ragged and wanting as mine. “Lily,” he groaned. My climax arrived in that idyllic rush, in a tidal wave that blew me over in staggered successions. My body shook and my toes curled, my high blistering me from the inside out. Lo grunted, his breath sharp, and he came right along with me.

The usual shame was absolved by the booze and the reminder that we hadn’t broken any rules. I convinced myself that he’s probably heard me come in the next room thousands of times. Seeing the act couldn’t have been much different. And I had never done something like this with any other guy before.

It felt special.

I turned to ask him if we could do it again. Once was never enough.

He saw the desperation before I uttered a word.

“If you do it in front of me again, I’ll have to fuck you,” he said.

“Have to or want to?” I asked in confusion.

He smiled easily, but never gave me a clear answer. “I may not get hard when you tell me you’re horny, but I’m still a guy. And you still have rules. Ones that I won’t take advantage of when you’re drunk.”

“So when I’m sober?”

His smile turned mischievous. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He gripped the neck of the Macallan. I must have looked disappointed still because he went to my closet instead of the bathroom. He pulled out a pink Victoria’s Secret shoebox from the bottom and set it gently on the bed beside me. He knew it was filled with all my toys. The gesture was kind.

He tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear and kissed me on the forehead. “Merry Christmas, Lil,” he said and left for the bathroom.

He never came back. I spent the next four hours in a self-love coma until I passed out. In the morning, I found him asleep on the tiled bathroom floor hugging an empty bottle. We never spoke about it again. I buried the memory with my fantasies, and I’ve always believed he lost the memory in his booze.

{ 38 } LOREN HALE

“I can’t believe you’re fucking engaged,” Ryke tells me.

We stretch by the small koi pond at the edge of our property, trying our best to run without nearing the wrought iron gates. Paparazzi camp on the street, peering through the gate that does little in terms of privacy. Rose already called a landscaper to plant tall hedges, but they won’t be finished for a whole month.

“In a scandal management perspective, marriage is the clear solution,” Connor says. He stretches his quads on the ground.

“Yes because now people will think Lily’s an adulterer and not just cheating on her college boyfriend,” Ryke retorts.

Connor stares him down. “Society believes marriage shows commitment, a stronger bond.” He stands to his feet. “Not to mention gossip mongers eat up a good love story. And what’s better than love uniting a sex addict and an alcoholic?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in New York right now?” Ryke snaps back, surrendering the fight. Everyone has an opinion about the engagement, but the only one that matters to me is Lily’s. “I thought Rose was running around with her fucking head off her shoulders.”

All of our family’s companies have been hit financially from the scandal, but unlike Fizzle and Hale Co., Calloway Couture is a young business already on shaky ground. The blow toppled it over. The menswear line that she’s been slaving over for months—the one I briefly modeled for—is being reviewed for Fashion Week. Even Connor said that the likelihood of the line surviving is slim to none. So she’s going to be pulled from the show, two department stores just dropped her, and she had to let go her assistants, including Lily. Rose won’t tap into her trust fund to pay her employees, and she’s losing money too quickly to keep them.

“She called and told me not to come,” Connor admits. “She doesn’t want me to be in the way.”

“Is Sebastian there?” I ask. I can see that scheming motherfucker trying to whisper his awful opinions about Connor into Rose’s ear. With the slow annihilation of her company weighing on her, she must be vulnerable.

“He’s been helping her with the line. I’m sure he’s there. Why do you ask?”

I should tell Connor that Sebastian is not fond of him, but he probably already picked up those signals. I should definitely mention how Sebastian is most likely plotting a way to cut him out of Rose’s life. But Lily still needs those tests. “No reason,” I say with a shrug.

He stares at me for a long moment, disbelieving, but he doesn’t prod further. We start walking back towards the house, our shoes crunching the stones on the path.

“Speaking of Calloway girls,” Connor says, “I read that Daisy is doing a spread in Vogue. Is that true?” After Lily and I talked with the lawyers, Daisy went to stay at her parent’s house again. Her modeling career catapulted because of the scandal. Magazines and photographers are lining up to book her for five-page spreads, labeling her as a “sex symbol” in ads that transform the sixteen-year-old into a man’s wet fantasy. They call her a young Brooke Shields, but comparing her to another teen icon doesn’t settle my stomach. And my blood is on boil, angry that anyone is willing to exploit that girl.

What’s worse, her own mother booked her the jobs. But it’s not my place to stick up for Daisy. I often wonder whose it is. Poppy has taken sanctuary at her small house in Philly, trying to protect her three-year-old daughter from the paparazzi. Rose is frazzled enough with her fashion line, and Lily and I are just trying to keep our heads on straight.

So who’s protecting Daisy?

Her parents sure as hell aren’t.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“She’s doing it,” Ryke says. “She says it’s tasteful or whatever.” He shakes his head, disgruntled by the situation. “She was a high fashion model and overnight she became a fucking supermodel, and instead of sheltering her from the media, her fucking mother is pushing her into it. I think I hate that woman.”

“You and me both,” I say, “and since when are you talking to Daisy?”

He gives me a glare. “Don’t fucking get onto me about that shit,” he snaps. “She needs a friend.”

“You know, I heard about that recession of sixteen-year-old girls,” Connor says. “It must be difficult for her to find a friend her own age.”

I smile and Ryke glowers. “Fuck off, Connor,” he snaps. “You know what all her prep school friends are doing? They keep asking her if she’s a sex addict too. As if it’s genetic. She needs someone who knows Lily, who fucking understands what’s going on.”

“So she needs you,” I say like he’s an idiot.

Ryke throws up his hands and stops walking. “For fuck’s sake,” he exclaims. “I’m giving her rock climbing lessons, not taking her on a date. We’re friends. The perverts who stare at her in magazines may forget she’s sixteen, but I won’t.” He starts uncapping his water bottle. “I also thought we talked about badgering me. We made a fucking deal in Cancun, remember?”

I won’t admit it, but there’s a piece of me that’s lashing out in guilt. I should be the one talking to Daisy and being a friend to her, yet I’m swamped in my own bullshit. If I was a better person, I’d probably actually thank Ryke. She does need someone to talk to, even if that someone has to be my hot-headed half-brother.

When we start walking again, Ryke ignites a conversation I thought we dropped at the beginning of our run. “Maybe you should start a company about pissing people off. You can call it Bastards-R-Us.”

I knew I shouldn’t have told him about accepting my trust fund or being obligated to build a company from scratch, like I’m a little kid playing with Legos. Ryke is vehemently against anything that puts me in contact with my father. He even went so far as offering me half his inheritance.

I turn around and he walks right into my chest. He takes a step back and glares. “What? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

“I’m not taking your goddamn money,” I sneer. “Stop bringing it up.”

“Children,” Connor says, breaking our feud. “As entertaining as this is, doesn’t Lily have a Stats exam in a half hour?”

I glance down at my watch and curse. We’re supposed to be escorting her to her class, since she refused to accept the bodyguard her father wanted to hire for her. It was a generous offer that Poppy and Daisy accepted. Rose was too fucking stubborn, and Lily didn’t want to be “shadowed by a big beefy guy,” which I took to mean she doesn’t want to be tempted by someone that isn’t me.

We jog back to the house quickly, but Lily isn’t in the kitchen where I left her. She’s become sedentary since the leak, moving at a snail’s pace. So I can’t imagine she wandered too far. I’m about to check the living room when I hear the pipes groan through the walls.

“Do you hear that?” I ask, turning to Connor and Ryke for clarification.

“Sounds like someone’s taking a Jacuzzi bath,” Connor tells me. That doesn’t make any sense. Lily took a shower this morning. Why would she need to bathe again?

Holy fuck.

My first thought: She’s masturbating. My second: She slit her wrists. The second thought propels me into hyper-drive. I am running up the fucking staircase before I can think anything else. I must look scared out of my mind because Ryke and Connor are right behind me. Maybe they fear it too.

I’d like to believe Lily couldn’t reach a low like that, but I’d be fooling myself. I’ve been there. I know she has too. It’s what happens when you hit a bottom that you can’t crawl out from.

I push through the door, envisioning her cold lifeless body. She jumps, and I don’t have time to breathe in relief. Because if she’s not dead, it means she’s masturbating.

I can’t believe this is how my world works.

Bubbles cover her naked body but don’t hide her cheeks that burn bright red. Connor and Ryke stumble in behind me and then Connor swivels right back around. “Sorry.”

Ryke blocks the door so Connor can’t leave.

“Get out!” Lily yells at them.

I haven’t moved closer, but she is bathing in guilt. You don’t just shower and then fifteen minutes later hop into a bubble bath.

“No, stay,” I tell them.

I’ve chastised her about porn.

I’ve pleaded with her to be honest with me.

Obviously, I need to find different fucking methods to make her stop doing this shit. I don’t want to embarrass her, but how else is she going to stop?

Ryke spreads his arms in the doorway, sufficiently blocking Connor’s exit.

“Really?” Connor raises his brows.

Ryke shrugs, and Connor shields his eyes with his hand as he backs into the counter.

I keep my gaze on Lily.

She avoids me and the two guys. “Make them leave,” she says, looking anywhere but here. “I have to get changed. What time is it?” She acts like nothing’s wrong. Like she’s innocent in all of this.

“Why are you taking a bubble bath?” I ask, sitting on the porcelain ledge.

She shrinks back and begins descending, her chin disappearing beneath the suds. “I dropped my ring into the trash. And then after I fished it out, I smelled like our leftover sausage, which is not a pleasant stench. So I decided to take a bath, but I dozed off. Baths do that, you know. They’re like nap-whisperers or summoners or whatever.”

“Is the shower broken?”

She shakes her head. “You know that pink soap ball—I saw it on the counter just before I hopped in the shower. And curiosity just kind of overtook me. I was hoping it’d turn this thing pink.” She holds up her left hand, flashing the diamond. “But alas, soap chemicals are inferior to shiny rock.” Her eyes flicker nervously to Ryke who stares at her, unflinching. “This is awkward.”

“Not for me,” Ryke replies.

She points to Connor, who still covers his eyes. “You’re making Connor uncomfortable,” she tells me. “You have done the impossible.”

“I’m not uncomfortable, Lily,” Connor says. “I’m just not looking forward to the two hour lecture from your sister about female privacy.” But he must know what I’m trying to do because he stays here, and when he lowers his hand, he nods to me like I’m doing something right.

Lily pales a little, realizing Connor is not going anywhere. “Don’t you think you can give me more privacy if you went in the other room?”

“Believe me, you don’t want to know what I think right now.”

Her eyes flit around the room again. She knows she’s been caught, but she won’t admit it. Normally, I’d yell, maybe say a few encouraging words, and then dial Allison’s number so she could give Lily a proper lecture. But yelling does nothing, and Allison isn’t her therapist anymore.

I know what I have to do.

“You have an exam to get to,” I remind her. “So why don’t you finish what you started and then we’ll head on out.”

She blinks a couple times. “What-what are you talking about?”

“Finish up and then we’ll leave,” I repeat, unwilling to clarify. She has to admit it herself.

“I’m done, so can you hand me that towel?”

“You’re done?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t smell like garbage anymore, so I call it a bathing success.”

“Maybe you misunderstood me,” I say dryly. “Finish fucking yourself.” I’m angrier than I thought. In my head, I meant to say finish pleasing yourself but my mouth had a different agenda.

Her eyes bug in horror, and I refuse to back down. Stay strong. Be tough. She doesn’t need a hug or to be coddled anymore.

“Can I talk to you alone?” she asks, refusing to look at the two guys that make this situation really fucking uncomfortable. That’s the point though. This isn’t allowed to be easy for her.

“No,” I snap. “I know what you were doing. You know what you were doing. And Connor and Ryke do too. It’s not a fucking secret.”

Her nose dips below the water, and in seconds, she’s about to submerge to hide from us. I reach out, and put my hand underneath her arm, holding her upright to face her problem.

She stares dazedly at the bubbles and a part of me wants nothing more than to climb into the bath and pull her into my arms. To hug her and tell her that everything is going to be okay. But that’s how it begins. She self-medicates her sadness and anxiety with sex, and I let her do it too many times before. I have watched this girl fall into the cycle of addiction, and she’s jumping onto those tracks again.

“I can’t be around you twenty-four-seven,” I tell her. “You have to figure this out, Lil. You can’t masturbate.” How many times do I have to say the words for her to understand them? How many times did I have to hear no more booze to fully accept it? It never gets easier. This is going to be a long-term battle. And I’m prepared to be there for her every fucking step of the way. Even if she wants to drown in this water, I’m going to pull her back up until she’s healthy. Until she can stand on her own two feet.

“You don’t understand,” she starts.

“Lo,” Connor cuts in. “If we don’t leave soon, she’s going to be late for her test.”

I nod and then grab the black cotton towel off the rack. “Turn around,” I tell Ryke, since Connor has already shifted his view.

When Ryke faces the wall, Lily stands, and I wrap the towel around her. “Get dressed and talk,” I say roughly, reminding her I’m still mad.

I lead her into the bedroom and look back to Connor and Ryke. “Can you two check the bathroom for porn and toys?” I ask them. “Destroy the room if you have to.”

Ryke looks a little too excited to fuck with my shit.

I follow Lily into the walk-in closet. “What don’t I understand, Lil?” I ask as I kneel and push past her shoes, grabbing a large black metal case.

“It helps me. I just needed one minute. That’s it…” Her words trail as she slowly pulls on her underwear and bra. It’s hard not to look. Her frame has always been small and wiry, something I’m attracted to. But when she spins around to search for a pair of pants, I have a clear view of her bare back. Her shoulder blades jut out and her ribs are almost visible by her waist. She’s been losing weight again.

“Have you been forgetting to eat?” I ask. She used to do that a lot. Sex occupied her mind more than necessary things—like bathing and eating. If I didn’t force her to shower, she’d smell like sex for a whole week. It’s not that she doesn’t want to get fat. I think she’d prefer to be curvier. She just literally forgets.

She sidesteps to look at herself in the full-length mirror, and her face slowly falls. “Oh…” She tries to squeeze that inch of fat she was so proud she gained, but she can barely grab at the tight skin on her belly. “Shit.”

She avoids my gaze as she zips up her jeans.

“It’s not because I’m into self-love again, I promise,” she tells me. “I’ve ruined everything for everyone, and it’s the only thing that makes me feel better anymore. I don’t have any good distractions like you. I don’t have any morning runs, and I’m not about to start a company. School ends in a week, and I just need something for myself.”

“If you’re trying to convince me to let you masturbate, it’s not working,” I snap. “It’s not going to happen, Lil.” I stand to my feet, the black case in my hands. I bought it for her birthday last year. She used to keep all her toys in this worn Victoria’s Secret box. At the time, I thought it was a great present, now I’m ready to light it on fire.

When she finishes dressing, her eyes fall to the case in my hands. “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m throwing it away.”

Her head whips back and forth, and she tries to tug the case from me in desperation. “You said we could still use them,” she pleads. “Together, I mean. Not by myself. I won’t ever use them by myself.” It’s true, that I kept them, intending to use them on her when she was ready. But I don’t know if she’ll ever be ready, and leaving them here for a what if isn’t worth the risk.

“They’re not staying.”

She tries to bring the case to her chest, but I hold it firm in my hand and shoot her a look. “We’re not five-years-old fighting over a fucking comic book,” I tell her. “If this was a bottle of Maker’s Mark, what would you want me to do?”

Her eyes widen at the comparison and she suddenly lets go.

“I’m sorry.” It sounds more like an impulse than something sincere.

“I don’t accept your apology.”

Her mouth drops, and I point between us. “Me and you,” I say. “We’re in a fight. And if you don’t start listening to me, we’re going to have serious problems, Lily. I’m holding up my end. I haven’t touched a drink. You have to start holding up yours.” Though I know it’s harder in a different way, but the porn and the masturbating shouldn’t be her big issues. It should be the actual sex.

She stares at me for a long moment, and I wonder what she actually heard of my speech. “We’re in a fight?” she asks, shock and hurt crossing her face.

I knew I shouldn’t have started with that.

“Yeah, how does it feel?” It doesn’t happen often.

She looks panic-stricken and I realize that the fear of losing me…of losing us is what really motivates her. She motions to the case. “Burn it. Do what you need to do.” She shoves it against my chest and tries to push me out the door. I force myself not to smile because the “tough love” is actually working. I’d rather not ruin it with a momentary grin.

“No masturbating,” I tell her again.

She nods wildly. “I know. None. Not at all. Scouts honor.” She holds up three fingers. I don’t believe her completely, but at least she’s come around from denying it.

Now I just have to bring her to the exam on time.

{ 39 } LILY CALLOWAY

I don’t have time to think about my fight with Lo, being caught by all three guys, or the fact that paparazzi sprung up like woken zombies as soon as I arrived on campus. Someone leaked my class schedule to the press, and I sprinted into the building to avoid them.

I’m going to fail the exam anyway, but Lo and Connor would never let me skip. I leave the guys in the lobby to wait, and I jog up the staircase to the second floor. My plan is to slip into the back of the auditorium before anyone can see me. I’ll take the test, turn it in, and leave. How hard can that be?

I swing the door open and stop cold at the top of the auditorium-style room. All three-hundred students are already nestled in their seats while TAs walk up the aisles to pass out the exams.

I’m late.

And there’s no open seat anywhere in sight. Oh wait…

I spot one in the middle aisle of the middle row. There’s not much room to squeeze past people, and I imagine disturbing everyone as I hop over thirty bodies to reach my seat. I don’t want to be that person. Everyone always gives the late-arrival dirty looks, and since I’ve been on the news for the past couple of weeks, I can’t imagine the looks being the normal kind of dirty. They’d be dirty with an extra pinch of malice.

My throat goes dry and my palms turn clammy. I’m about to sprint out and make up some lame excuse to Lo, but the professor notices my lingering presence.

“Miss Calloway,” he calls.

I freeze, and like a tsunami, all three-hundred bodies rotate to set their inquisitive gazes on me. If this is what being an actress feels like, I want no part of it.

“Come see me down here, please.” The professor motions for me.

I suck in a shallow breath and descend the carpeted stairs, trying to avoid all the eyes. Not even halfway there, some guy coughs into his hand. On the second cough, I hear “whore.”

That’s original.

Two more steps and someone else calls me a skank, louder this time. I glance towards the noise and I see a girl elbowing the guy in the ribs.

Five more steps and the voices start to rise as people talk to their friends.

“All right, settle down,” the professor tells them.

“Go back to Penn!” a guy yells. Voices escalate and cheer in agreement.

“Better yet, go to Yale! I hear they like filth!” I don’t know what that person has against Yale, but I try to keep my cool. I’m almost to the bottom of the auditorium, and I silently curse myself for walking in on the second floor.

“Shut up!” A girl’s voice pitches over the talking. Huh…someone’s on my side? “We’re trying to take a test here!” Maybe not.

“Quiet!” the professor shouts, angrily now. “Everyone. The tests are out, and that means the next person who speaks gets a zero.” The room hushes instantly, and I finally reach my destination.

The professor is middle-aged and always wears a nice button-down with slacks. He takes out a manila envelope from his briefcase and hands it to me. My name is scribbled across the front.

“I’ve spoken to your other professors,” he says in a low voice so only I can hear, “we’ve agreed that your presence for finals week will only disturb the other students. Your exam today and your finals from all your classes are in that folder. You can turn it into my mailbox by the last day of finals.”

“So they’re like take-home tests?” I ask, a little confused.

“Essentially, yes. There’s no reason for you to be on campus for one last week. You’ll distract everyone. You’ve already wasted…” He looks at the clock. “Five minutes of their time. For some that could cost them a letter grade.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Just return the exams on time, and if you could, exit out this door.” He motions to the one behind him, the one where I won’t need to walk up all those stairs.

I say a quick thanks and then disappear quickly out the double doors. I peek into the envelope, all the tests nestled inside. It’s generous. They could have easily just failed me. But it also reminds me how my life is changing. I can’t even sit in a classroom anymore. What is next year going to be like? Will the professor give me all the tests to take home? Or maybe they’re hoping I’ll be expelled from Princeton before that happens.

But with my father’s lawyers defending my stay here, I know I’ll be back next year.

Walking down the hall, I find Lo, Connor, and Ryke sitting in the lobby where I last left them, waiting for me. They talk quietly amongst each other. I raise my hand to wave and call to them, but a body steps in front of me, blocking my path.

“Hey, aren’t you the infamous Lily Calloway?”

He speaks loud enough that I see Lo’s head perk up. His eyes hit mine and they fill with concern.

“Are you deaf?” the guy laughs.

I meet his pretty green eyes and scan his blond hair, a twenty-something guy, tall with muscular arms. He sports a black and orange Princeton tee.

“I’m Lily,” I confirm. My eyes flicker past his body again. Lo is on his feet, but he hesitates towards reaching my side.

Is he still angry at me?

Oh jeez, we’re still in a fight, aren’t we?

My heart beats crazily, and I focus my attention back on the blond. “I’m also leaving.” I sidestep and he follows suit, trapping me to this spot in the hall.

I hear Lo’s shoes on the tile floor, and I try to relax.

“Why would you want to do that?” Blond Guy asks. “I heard that you love going down, and I’ve got something here for you.” He grabs my hand, and fear bobs my throat. Oh my God. I never thought this could happen in a hallway (slightly empty, albeit) during the middle of the day. Maybe he thinks I’m as wanting and easy as they say I am on the news. Maybe he believes I won’t care or fight him. That has to be it.

But I’m not that girl. Sure, I may have played into his advances a year ago, but now they literally curdle my stomach. I recoil and try to untangle from his strong hold, but he grips my hand and places it right on his pants.

Whatever I feel—it doesn’t last long because Lo grabs his shoulders from behind and throws his back into the wall.

I flinch, not accustomed to physical aggression from Lo, not even when he pinned Mason against my car. And he eases off the guy within a second, his eyes pulsing with something hot and black.

“This is why America invented the sexual offender registry, you sick fuck,” Lo spits.

“I didn’t touch her,” Blond sneers, the veins in his neck bulging. “Your slutty girlfriend was all over me.”

“I was not,” I snap, about to charge him myself. I don’t have nails, but I’m not below slapping.

Ryke grabs me, and I squirm, trying to go help Lo. “Lily, stop,” Ryke says, holding me tighter.

“You want your dick to be touched so badly, fine,” Lo growls, and he does something that causes me to pause, going quiet and motionless in Ryke’s arms.

Lo slams the guy again, his back digging further into the wall, and he puts his hand over the guy’s pants. The icky feeling I had for touching Blond vanishes. I’m not the only who did it. Though, Lo volunteered his hand.

Blond thrashes, and Lo must grip hard because his face contorts into a pained wince. “Get the fuck off me.”

“What? You don’t like it anymore?”

“I can sue you for harassment.”

“Let’s play that fucking game,” Lo replies. “Let’s see whose lawyers are better. I’m a goddamn Hale. My family eats shitty fucks like you for brunch. Don’t you ever force yourself on a girl, ever again.” Lo loosens his grip, and then he steps back from him. Blond hesitates to retaliate, but his eyes ping from Lo, to Ryke, to Connor, and he mutters a curse and retreats down the hall.

Ryke looks ready to run after him and take a swing.

Lo’s chest rises, his hands clenching and unclenching. I see Jonathan in his words and actions, and I know the same comparison must infiltrate his head. Sober Lo still does mean things, and I’m not sure what the right way to protect me was—or what I could have done to help. But I do realize how much he hates even the notion of turning into Jonathan Hale. And for sacrificing a large chunk of his heart to come to my aid, I am very, very grateful. What he just did for me—it wasn’t easy.

His eyes find me. I step forward and put my arms around him, wanting to hold him and thank him all in one swoop.

Drunk Lo wouldn’t have been here.

I’d either have to give into this guy’s advances, scream for help and hope that a Ryke Meadows was around, or try to find a way to fight off a six-foot guy.

Lo kisses the top of my head, and says, “Are you sure you don’t want a bodyguard? I can’t always be around you, Lil.”

I’ve contemplated it. The idea of a guy shadowing me is a little unsettling, but after this, it’s definitely safer. “Only if you want me to.”

“We can pick out someone who’s really ugly,” he offers with a small smile. It’ll make him feel better, and that matters a lot to me.

I nod. “Okay.”

I separate from Lo and hold up the manila folder to Connor, who has been staring at it in curiosity for the past couple of minutes. “All my exams,” I explain. “The professors don’t want me on campus anymore.” For obvious reasons. And right now, I don’t want to be here all that much either.

Being a sex addict does not give guys the right to touch me. I didn’t think that would be an issue until now. Is this a problem that will persist for the rest of my life? Or something that will die when the media loses interest in me?

Only time has the answers.

{ 40 } LILY CALLOWAY

“This would go a lot faster if you’d just let me bubble in the two other scantrons while you work on that one,” Sebastian tells me. He sits on the Queen Anne chair smoking his cigarette as he watches me hunched over piles of papers and scantrons. I’m basically copying the answers from Sebastian’s old exams to my finals, which feels more like cheating than simply memorizing.

But I’m fairly certain that actually letting him bubble in the answers would be cheating. “I’m not a cheater.” I cringe. “I’m not a complete cheater. Don’t tempt me to your dark side.”

He blows out a line of smoke. “Your angelic image was tarnished far before you ever accepted my help. You and I aren’t so different, Lily. We both enjoy an unhealthy amount of co—”

I throw a pillow at him and he catches it with his free hand, trying to protect his cigarette. Some things haven’t changed after I was outed as a sex addict. Sebastian is still Sebastian. And apparently he’s seen enough rich kid debauchery that my secret was hardly anything riveting. His words.

So I called him to bring over old exams for all my finals, and he hasn’t stared at me any differently than before the scandal. Which is kinda nice.

The front door bangs open.

I hurriedly shuffle the old exams into a pile. My head whips around, trying to find a good hiding place. I lift up the sofa cushion and stuff them under it.

When I meet Sebastian’s gaze, he looks like he could rip out my jugular for putting his old exams with the dust bunnies and rusted pennies. Oops.

Connor’s voice echoes from the kitchen. “We can keep brainstorming. We’ll come up with something, Lo.” They must be discussing the start-up company that Lo has to pitch to his father. He has a couple days left to choose a platform, and he enlisted Connor’s expertise. They spent all morning at a meeting to throw around ideas—and when I say “meeting,” I mean they sat in Starbucks.

They both saunter into the living room, Connor carrying a tray of coffees and a small pastry. “I thought you could use some test-taking boosts,” he tells me. Oh, this is why I love Connor Cobalt as a tutor. I beam, but that falls suddenly at the realization that I’m (A) Lying to him. (B) Cheating. (C) Team Sebastian. (D) Accepting the treats despite all of the above.

I say thanks and scoop the whipped cream from the coffee with my finger. Sin does taste delicious.

Lo stands off to the side, busily texting on his phone. Six days have passed since our bathroom fight over my self-love, and he has yet to forgive me completely. Our fights used to revolve around our addictions—sometimes we’d just drown in them for an extended week, ignoring each other. But this is a real, normal fight that hurts more than I ever thought it would.

“Lo, did you come up with any good ideas for the company?” I ask. I offered to help, but every time I suggested something, he told me to focus on my health. I grab the chocolate-filled croissant on the table and tear off small pieces to eat. I dunk a portion in my coffee.

Lo acknowledges me, and his eyes lighten when he sees me eating. “The top choice is a food truck.” He doesn’t look enthusiastic about that idea.

I take a slurp from my coffee. “You have more time,” I remind him. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings…” I narrow my eyes. No that’s not right. “Well, in this case the fat lady would be your father.”

He smiles, and he must catch the momentary lapse of happiness towards me because his lips downturn quickly. He closes off the conversation with the shift of his body.

We’re still fighting apparently.

“Where’s Rose?” Sebastian asks, lighting another cigarette.

Connor stares at it, letting irritation cross his face, his chest inflating with a deep inhale. “She’s taking a final, and you shouldn’t be smoking in here.”

“And yet…” Sebastian blows out a short puff. “I am.”

Lo’s phone rings, and he slips into the kitchen to answer his cell.

Connor steps towards Sebastian, and my evil tutor suddenly springs from his chair, both guys standing their ground with superiority. They each believe they’re better than the other. I’m not accustomed to intellectual stand-offs.

Sebastian appraises the cigarette in his fingers. “She hardly cares if I smoke, you know. If you did it, she’d drop you like she did her last boyfriend. She found a pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. Next day, he was gone. Lasted one taxingly long week.”

“You planted the cigarettes on him, didn’t you?”

Sebastian takes a long drag and breathes the smoke right into Connor’s face. “Perceptive.”

Connor doesn’t even flinch. “Maybe you should be.”

Sebastian lets out a laugh. “You don’t think I am? I know that Rose has spent almost no time with you since Calloway Couture has suffered. I know that she cried on my shoulder two nights ago, not yours. I know that she called me, not you, to help pack up her office.”

She already started boxing her workplace?

“You feel threatened by me,” Connor states, stepping forward so only a small space separates his body from Sebastian’s. Connor has the height advantage—he usually does.

“By Connor Cobalt? A guy who is willing to sell out anyone if the benefit weighs on his side. No, I am not threatened by you. I just hate you.” Sebastian gives him a long once over. “Rose always did too. I don’t know what you said that changed her mind.”

“She never hated me,” Connor says casually.

“She bitched about you all the time in prep school. She’d return from Model UN, and I’d have to listen to her drone on about how Richard made a treaty against her country’s best interests. How Richard won the highest honor for countering terrorist actions.” Model UN sounds mildly intense and slightly scary.

“For such a smart guy, you really know nothing,” Connor says, his voice even-tempered. “She liked me, Sebastian. She bitched to you because she was attracted to me, a guy that riled her more than placated her, and that pissed her off.” Connor steals the cigarette from his fingers. “And if you truly cared for that girl, you’d realize that every time you smoke in this house, you set off her OCD.”

Sebastian’s lip twitches.

“You didn’t know that, did you?” Connor says. “While she cries on your shoulder about her company, yesterday she stayed the night at my apartment. And I spent four fucking hours calming her down because you put wild ideas in her head. You smoke, you mess with her things, and you return her to me restless. She paces back and forth, muttering idioms that make no sense, and I have to figure out how to put her back together. You are not a friend to her; you’re a parasite.”

I drop my pastry on my lap.

Sebastian is left speechless, his lips pressed tightly together.

Connor won this round. But when Rose enters the mix, I just hope he’s able to win the whole battle.

After Connor snuffs out the cigarette on his empty cup, he masterfully bottles his annoyance towards Sebastian, and his eyes fall to the scattered scantrons. “You should be taking those in a quiet testing environment, preferably somewhere clean.” His collects the gum wrappers, and Sebastian’s crinkled magazines, tossing them in a nearby trash bin.

“She’s fine,” Sebastian says, finding his voice again.

“What are you even doing here?” Connor asks. “If Lily’s taking her finals, she doesn’t need to be tutored anymore.”

“I’m monitoring the exams so she doesn’t cheat,” he lies. I want to snort, given the fact that minutes ago he offered to bubble-in my finals for me.

“I can do that,” Connor says. “Go propagate cancer somewhere else.” He takes a seat next to me—right on the same cushion where I buried the tests.

I hear the crunch and the crackle of papers, muffled but still distinguishable. I close my eyes and count to five in my head. This cannot be happening.

“Lily,” Connor says tensely, “am I sitting on porn?”

What?! I open one eye and meet Connor’s gaze. I expect him to be calm in the normal I’m-Connor-Cobalt-and-I-don’t-show-real-emotions kind of way. Instead, he wears disappointment fairly well. This is the moment where I can either out myself as a somewhat-cheater or take the hit for stashing porn. There’s no contest.

I spent days without self-love or any kind of sex from Lo, trying desperately to return to good faith with him. All of that will be squandered in one moment if he thinks it’s dirty mags. And I’m so sick of lying.

“It’s not porn,” I confess.

Connor stands and lifts up the cushion. He stares at the papers, the top exam with a random name (Jeremy Gore) and a letter grade (A-).

He shakes his head. “I knew it,” he says rather calmly, adding all the pieces together so easily. Must be a smart-person trait. I bet Sherlock Holmes was a certified genius.

Sebastian rolls his eyes and takes out his phone, as if this is all very dull for him, but I imagine that Connor has him shaking internally, a few more moves away from dethroning him in Rose’s life.

I gather up the tests before Connor tries to toss them out. I still have finals to take. “I can explain,” I say as I straighten out the papers on my lap.

He returns the cushion to its original state, and before I can offer an explanation, the front door swings open.

“Just because the bike can reach a hundred-fifty, doesn’t mean you should go that fucking fast. You nearly cut off a car behind you.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Daisy says.

“He honked at you.”

“Or he honked at you. You were riding my brake lights.”

“I was ten fucking feet behind you, and next time, I’m taking you to a race track.”

“Really?” I can hear the smile behind the word.

“Yeah, if you want to fucking kill yourself, at least you won’t cause a five-car pileup while you’re doing it.”

When they walk into the living room, Daisy is smiling from ear to ear. Both carry motorcycle helmets under their arms, reminding me that Ryke agreed to Daisy’s offer. About a week ago, he told her he would keep the black Ducati in return for teaching her how to ride safely, which must be a hard job with Daisy as a pupil.

“You were supposed to tutor her,” Connor says to Sebastian, actual anger seething in his eyes. It’s kind of terrifying.

Ryke and Daisy go quiet by the staircase, realizing they walked in on a…situation.

Sebastian pockets his phone in his blazer. “You and I both know that one is a lost cause. I did her a favor.”

“She doesn’t need another handout.” He invades Sebastian’s space again. “You’re a lazy sanctimonious prick who profits off of apathetic trust fund babies. The students who need those exams are the ones who can’t afford them. You knowingly perpetuate a repugnant cycle.” He stares at him like he’s shit on the bottom of his shoe. “You keep the rich kids stupid and the poor kids poor.”

“What’s going on?” Rose’s voice ices the entire room.

No one moves. She stands near Daisy and Ryke, who must have left the front door open. No one heard her walk in.

Sebastian slips out of Connor’s blockade. “I caught your boyfriend smoking that.” He points to the snuffed cigarette on the coffee cup. “And then he accused me of helping Lily cheat.”

Connor looks like he could kick Sebastian’s ass. And that face—one of pure venom—does not come often. Or at least, I’ve rarely seen it since we’ve been friends.

Rose glances at Ryke and Daisy for verification.

“We just got here,” Daisy says.

Ryke is not about to vouch for Connor either. They’re not the best of friends since their personalities clash more than compliment.

Rose doesn’t even ask me whether or not Sebastian helped me cheat or if Connor smoked all those cigarettes. I guess she won’t trust my answer anyway, even if I give her the right one.

But I have to try. “I did cheat,” I tell her in a high voice.

She ignores me. So much for honesty.

My sister approaches both guys and rests her hands on her hips, looking between them. Connor stares at her with such intensity, basically speaking through his soul-bearing eyes.

Rose engages with him, not able to tear away.

Sebastian panics and places a hand on her shoulder. “Rose, he’s manipulating you. It’s what he does.”

Rose flinches.

“Don’t doubt yourself,” Connor tells her. “Not for this guy, not for anyone.”

Rose wavers.

“Think about it,” Connor says. “You told me he’s profited off of selling old tests before.”

“The cigarettes—”

“You have known me for almost ten years. I have held you in my arms. I have kissed you. Have you ever smelled smoke on me before?”

Sebastian cuts in, “Rose, he convinced Brad to forfeit his Lambda Kai presidency so someone else could take the position. He can make people do things they would never do.”

Connor stares down at her. “I would never manipulate you.” But he doesn’t deny that he’s done it before, that he uses whatever power he has to get what he wants. I always knew Connor did things for his benefit, not out of the kindness of his heart, but hearing it from someone else, well, it makes it real.

Sebastian says, “He dated Hayley Jacobs just so her father would write him a recommendation to Wharton. He’s with you because of your name. How many times do I have tell you that?”

Rose’s eyes narrow at Connor. “Did my father write you a recommendation?”

“He offered, yes.”

“And you accepted?”

He says nothing.

“Unbelievable.” Her face twists like he stomped on her heart. I rise, about to go to her side. But I hesitate as she points a finger at Connor. “You came with me to my parent’s Sunday luncheons because you were trying to worm your way into my father’s good graces.”

“No, I came with you because you’re my girlfriend,” he says, stepping closer to her.

She raises her chin, which starts to quiver despite her strength. “I trusted you. And all this time—”

“I have never lied to you,” he says. “You know more about my life than anyone else. I don’t share things willingly, you know this about me. Why would I let you in?”

Rose whispers, “You’re playing with my head.”

“No,” he says again, forcefully so that she understands. “He is.”

Sebastian’s fingers dig deeper in her shoulder. “You’ve known me since we were children. I only have your best interest, Rose.”

But her eyes stay glued to Connor.

“Rose,” Connor says with such empathy, gazing at her with passion that nearly stops my heart. “You know me.”

She takes a deep breath. “That’s just it Connor, I don’t think I do. I don’t think anyone really does.”

Sebastian begins to smile, and Connor looks about ready to scream.

Rose adds, “I want you to leave.”

I can’t tell who she directs this to until Sebastian’s smile fades completely. “Rose, didn’t you hear—”

“I heard you,” she says. “I hear you talk badly about Connor every time I’m with you, and while I agree he’s not the most forthcoming human being when it comes to his personal life, he’s still my boyfriend. I would never allow Lily to cheat. I hate that you smoke. And I’m not going to take your suggestion to quit Calloway Couture. I’m going to unpack my office. I’m going to fight for my company. I’m going to do whatever it takes, and I’m going to stop listening to you tell me that I can’t beat these odds.”

Go Rose. I think we’re all smiling. Except for Sebastian.

He shakes his head at her. “I’ll call you tomorrow when you’re not being so bitchy.”

“You won’t,” she says. “I’m blocking your number. You’re not to see me or talk to me. I never want to hear from you again.”

His mouth falls. “You would listen to him? Rose, I’ve known you longer.”

“He knows me better.”

Sebastian just keeps shaking his head.

Rose glances at Connor, her shoulders locked tight. “Can you please get him out of the house? I need to go…” Her eyes flit away, looking for her room as though it’s vanished.

“Of course,” he says easily. His hand falls to the small of her back, and he whispers something in her ear before kissing her deeply. She returns the affection, but there’s sadness in her eyes that wasn’t there before—the stress of everything weighing on her. And I have a feeling Sebastian has added to it every single day.

When they part, Rose turns to me. And my guards rise. Oh no. She’s going to yell at me for cheating. I open my mouth, about to let out a string of sincere apologies, but her arms fling around my shoulders and she pulls me into a big, sisterly hug. One that she rarely gives, even when she’s in a good mood.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers in my ear. “I love you.” I feel her tears on my shoulder. “I’m here if you need me now. I promise.”

I don’t think I deserve this. I ruined her company, but at the same time, I am overwhelmed at having my sister’s support again. She’s my biggest and best cheerleader.

So I hug back. I want to ask if she’ll be okay with all of the Connor and Sebastian stuff, but she places a kiss on my cheek and spins towards her bedroom on the main floor.

Connor watches her carefully, and Rose meets his gaze for a single second, brushing her tears off her face. I think they can read each other’s minds or something because he nods to her and she nods back and disappears.

Connor guides Sebastian towards the exit.

Sebastian’s eyes flicker to the exams on my lap.

“You’re not getting them back,” Connor tells him.

“You know,” Sebastian says, “I hope you break her heart. She deserves what’s coming to her.”

“So do you,” Connor says, slamming the door on Sebastian’s face.

When the tension begins to eke out of the living room, Ryke says, “Well I fucking learned something today.” His lips rise. “Connor has balls.”

Connor takes a breath and any anxiety or anger disappears like the wind, undetectable by the average human eye. “Glad I could entertain you.” His eyes flicker between the hallway where Rose disappeared down and me.

He chooses me, which only puts a larger pit in my stomach. He stands in front of the couch, his hands slipping in his slacks.

“Do you really see me as an apathetic trust fund baby?” I ask, remembering some of the insults that inadvertently flew my way. I have been lazy and uncaring towards college. I should have tried harder.

“Technically you don’t have a trust fund anymore,” Connor tells me. His words don’t lift my spirits, and I don’t deserve a brightened day. I’m at fault here. “You should have told me you were cheating when I asked.”

“I can’t pass without the old exams,” I defend quickly.

“You can,” Connor retorts. “I’ve tutored you, and I know that if you just studied, you could pass.”

“I can’t take that chance. I bombed the first two tests. I’m already behind a semester, and if I fail these classes I’m going to be behind a whole year.” I hold the tests to my chest, unwilling to let them go over Connor’s moral compass. “It’s not cheating. It’s beating the system. Everyone does it.”

“You’ve already beat the system by being at Princeton. By being at Penn. If you didn’t have your last name, you’d be at a community college. Where you should be, Lily. How many times are you going to beat the system until it beats you to death?” His words are weighted and have more double meanings than I can process. “You don’t need an A. You’re going to be fine if you graduate with a low GPA at the bottom of the class. Do yourself a favor. Toss out those tests, and I’ll help you take your finals. I’ll make sure you learn the material to pass. I promise.”

“I have to turn them in by six o’clock today,” I say. “That’s not possible, Connor.”

“They’re take-home tests,” he reminds me. “You’re allowed to use your notes and your book. Just not old exams. We can make it happen.”

“We can all help,” Daisy exclaims with a smile. “I have the recipe for the perfect study brownies.”

Ryke gives her a look.

“Not those kind of brownies.”

The undertaking feels bigger than me, but I have support. “You should go talk to Rose,” I tell him. I don’t want to draw him away from her more than I already have.

“She’ll want to be alone right now,” he says. I’m not so sure about that, but he adds, “Trust me.” And for some reason, I do. Maybe Sebastian is right. Maybe Connor does have power in his words.

An hour later, I’ve finished a political science final and moved onto Stats. A tray of warm, gooey brownies emits a sweet chocolate aroma in front of me. I’m basically eating the entire plate. Daisy flips through her motorcycle magazine, not touching a single one.

Ryke left thirty minutes ago, before the brownies were pulled out of the oven. And I suspect if he was here, he would have prodded Daisy until she at least tasted a chunk.

I should be one-hundred percent focused on my test, but Lo went upstairs not too long ago. He never said a word about his phone call or my tests. He just disappeared.

I hurry through my Stats exam, unconsciously remembering some of the answers from when I previously bubbled them in with Sebastian. I finish in the next fifteen minutes, guessing on the last two. The book was helpful, but Connor’s notes were better. He sat beside me and scribbled down examples that made the harder questions a lot easier.

I can’t stop thinking about Lo. Upstairs. He only isolates himself when he’s drinking, and since he’s sober, I’m not quite sure what alone time for Loren Hale really entails. I worry all the same.

“Can I take a five minute break?” I ask Connor by my side. “I have to go talk to Lo.”

He checks his watch, calculating how long it will take me to finish in time to turn the exams in. “You have ten minutes before I’m coming to collect you. So please don’t let me walk in on you and Lo fornicating.”

Fornicating. I smile. It’s such a fancy word for fucking. “We won’t.”

I dash upstairs to my bedroom, stopping at the door for a second. I hesitate to walk inside. Maybe he wants to be alone, like really alone. The thought stabs me cold, and I lower my hand from the knob. Is he slowly breaking away from me? Is that it?

My shoulders rise.

I won’t let him go so easily.

I open the door and brace myself for what’s to come.

Lo sits at the desk, scrolling through different websites on the computer. His back to me, I see him analyzing a business site. When I shut the door, he swivels in his chair and makes note that it’s just me before he returns to his laptop.

The casual brush-off stings.

Before our fight, he would have asked me for help. He would have gushed about all of his ideas. I’ve been his friend in everything for years, and all of a sudden, I’ve become as useful as the dust on a windowsill.

“Shouldn’t you be taking your finals?” he asks.

“I’m on a break,” I say, sinking onto the bed.

He focuses on the computer screen.

Is he growing without me? My worst fear may be starting to come true. He’s strong, committed and sober. I’m unhealthy and struggling in my addiction. My weakness is too much for him. I’m pulling him down. I’m a weight.

And I’m losing him. Just like I lost everything else.

“Lo,” I try to keep my voice steady.

He faces me this time, concern etching his brow.

I open my mouth, a pain in my heart. “Do you want to break up with me?”

“What?” he chokes.

“It’s just…we’ve never fought for so long before, and I can’t tell what you’re thinking anymore.” My insecurities gush like a busted piñata, and I desperately wish to gather all the candy and stuff it back inside.

“Lil,” he breathes, standing. He comes to me and takes my cheeks in his hands, staring down. “Don’t ever ask me that again.” His voice is soft but still sharp.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” I say, twisting his T-shirt in my hand. “I mean, I would try to stop you, but I would understand. You’re strong and I’m...” a mess.

He brushes my fallen tears with his thumb. “I had rehab,” he reminds me. “I had lots of help, Lil. Your addiction is much different, and there’s less support there. I knew I’d be strong and you’d be struggling. It’s just the way it is. I’m prepared for this. I won’t leave. I won’t ever fucking leave.”

I’m about to go in for a hug, and he withdraws. “But that doesn’t give you the right to fall into your old habits. Okay?”

“I know. I know.” I fiddle with my fingers. “Are we still fighting? I mean, I get it if you still want to be in a fight. But I’m sorry. I’m really sorry I let you down.” That’s not completely right. I think after today, especially my conversation with Connor, I know who I’m disappointing the most. “I’m sorry I let myself down.”

His lips rise just a little. “I accept that apology.”

He lifts me into a hug, and I promise myself that I’ll try harder. Even if everything starts slipping away again, I’ll remember this moment, how long it took me to right what I had done wrong. I don’t want to start that vicious cycle again. I want to break it. I want to beat my addiction for good, no matter if outside forces pull me down.

I can do it this time.

Please, let me succeed.

{ 41 } LOREN HALE

I wish I could give Lily the clear steps to her recovery, the tips in rehab, all the people sharing their stories for hours on end—everything that I had, the things I sometimes take for granted. But recovery for sex addiction is just so subjective and personal. It’ll never be the same. All I can do is try to be here for her as best I can, especially after the leak.

I trashed all of her toys, even the vibrator that Ryke found in the bathtub. She’s nervous without them, but they’re a security blanket that I’m no longer willing to let her have.

Lily groans and collapses on the bed, her hands on her belly. “I’m stuffed.”

I smile. I called in three different orders of pasta and pizza from a local Italian place and practically force fed her garlic bread. We celebrated the end of the semester. She turned her finals in this evening with only minutes to spare. She informed me what happened with Sebastian and Connor, and I’m proud of her for making the right decision.

“Too stuffed to have sex?” I ask. I lift my shirt over my head and toss it aside.

She props her body on her elbows, her eyes wide. “You-you want to have sex with me?” She asks like she’s suddenly contagious. This is not the reaction I expected. I thought she’d fling her arms around me and go in for attack, trying to touch my dick before I could.

But she remains on the bed, her legs curled up underneath her. She’s already changed into her pajama shirt—which is my shirt—and I saw her slip on a pair of panties. She usually climbs into bed without them, thinking that the easy entry will entice me to fuck her. I know her games.

Tonight, I plan on having sex with her. For one, I’m horny and I’d really like to fuck my girlfriend. Second, I’ve finally accepted her apology. Third, she has to see her new psychiatrist tomorrow and I’m worried this guy is going to throw down some abstinence act on her.

I study her from head to toe and decide that I want to tease her a little. Giving in is just too easy. “You’re right, maybe we shouldn’t. You’ve been bad.” Now in my boxer-briefs, I climb onto the bed where she lies unmoving.

“Bad good or bad bad?” she asks.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say with a smile. I reach towards the nightstand and pause. This would be the moment where I’d grab my whiskey. But in this moment, I only want one thing. And it’s not booze.

I open the drawer and fumble around for a condom. As soon as Lily sees the small package, she crawls over to me and holds out both hands like she’s trying to catch rain. It’s beyond adorable.

“I was bad good then,” she tells me.

“You were bad bad,” I refute, not giving her the condom just yet. “What did you learn this week?”

She drops her hands. “Self-love is not for me…even in bubbles. People at Princeton hate Yale and my boyfriend is really sexy when he defends my honor.”

“People at Princeton hate Yale?” I ask, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, I didn’t get it either.”

My eyes catch her ring. In the bathtub, I knew she was lying about wanting to see if the diamond could be dyed pink, but I wonder if she really does dislike it. I’ve only seen her stare at it with disdain.

“You know,” I say, taking her left hand and rubbing my thumb over the diamond. She stiffens a little. “If you hate it, I can always get you a new one. This proposal may have been bullshit but the engagement is real.”

She retracts her hand and shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Girls would die for a ring like this.”

“Just because other girls would like that ring doesn’t mean you have to.”

“It may not be my dream ring,” she admits, “but I want to keep it.” She points to my other hand, the one with the condom. “Let’s get back to what’s important here.”

I don’t give the package to her. Instead, I press my lips to hers, cupping the back of her head to bring her closer to me. She reciprocates instantly and swoops her arms around my neck. My mouth melds with Lily’s, our tongues brush and I suck on her bottom lip. She deepens the kiss, her hands running up and gripping my hair. She kisses hungrily, like it’s her fucking life-force.

I have to break apart just to get air.

Her mouth trails my neck, and her hand moves over my boxer-briefs, rubbing my cock. It feels too good to demand her to stop. My hands slide underneath her baggy shirt and find her breasts, grabbing and kneading them until I feel her gasp against my neck.

Her movements start to intensify and she tugs at my boxer-briefs, my cock springing out. Dammit. Swiftly, I gather her hands in mine and pull her away from my dick. It takes all my control not to let her pleasure me right away.

She stays on her knees, but they have parted considerably and I steal a glance down at the spot between her legs. I can already see the wetness seeping through her cotton panties. When I look back up, her eyes haven’t moved from mine.

“Can you teach me how to be the good kind of bad?”

Christ. I want inside of you.

“It’s not easy,” I tell her.

“Please.”

She’s never given over her control during sex. Not like this. And I think it’s the perfect time to do something she’s been waiting for.

As quickly as I can, I tug down my underwear and toss them to the floor. Still leaning against the headboard, I scoop up the condom from the sheets and tear it with my teeth. She holds out her hands again in that cute little manner. I don’t have the willpower right now to let her put it on me without taking her hard and fast. So I ignore her requests and slide the condom along my shaft in two fast motions.

She doesn’t say anything, but she scuttles back and lies down, waiting for me to take her, like I’m going to be on top. God, I love that I’m going to fill her with surprise.

“Nope,” I say and grab her hand, sliding her back to me. I take hold of her left leg and her hip, lifting her onto my lap with ease. She straddles me and braces herself with her hands on my chest. Her eyes widen in shock.

“I’m…we’re…”

I can’t stop grinning.

Her head slowly drops until she’s staring at my cock that’s right up against her pussy, waiting (rather impatiently) to be inside. She glances back to me. “This isn’t on the blacklist?”

“No, love.”

She frowns. “Do you think since Dr. Banning isn’t my therapist anymore that I can see that list?”

“Even if she’s not your therapist, we’re still going to obey that list,” I tell her. I have no intention of fucking with all the progress she’s made. And who knows how long her new psychiatrist will last? “So I don’t want you to see it.” Not yet at least.

She nods and rises on her knees, acting like she’s going to put my cock inside of her. I hold onto her waist, stopping her. She looks confused, and the horny part of me is too. Why the fuck am I dragging this out?

“If you’re going to be on top, we have to have rules,” I tell her.

“Oh.”

“You said you wanted to be good bad.”

“I do.” She touches my bare chest with her hands, and her eyes fall to my abs. She becomes distracted way too fucking easily.

I tilt her chin up, her eyes landing on mine again. “Don’t move.”

“What?”

Before I can answer her, I have lifted her by the hips and placed her gently over my cock. Her panties are still on, but I tug the fabric aside and out of my way as I lower her down. She clutches onto my neck and lets out a ragged breath that turns quickly into a moan.

“That’s it,” I tell her, easing her down onto me. I close my eyes for a second, basking in the tightness, finally inside of her… When I fill her completely, she bucks her hips, beginning to rock against me.

I seize her waist again. “Don’t move.”

She shudders at my words. “Then you move,” she pleads.

“I’m taking my sweet fucking time,” I reply, running my hand underneath her shirt, massaging her breast once more.

She lets out a long moan and presses her forehead to my shoulder, but she doesn’t move her hips this time. “How are you not dying?”

I am. But I want it to last too much to give into my impulses.

“Lo, I need to come.”

“You want to come,” I refute. “You don’t need to do it.” My lips find her ear and I suck gently on the sensitive place. Another staggered breath rumbles through her.

“That’s not what it feels like.”

I raise her shirt past her belly, but she refuses to disentangle from my shoulders to allow the fabric off her arms and over her head. “And I want you naked, but apparently we all don’t get what we want.”

She shifts a little, causing her eyes to flutter, but her arms weakly fly to the air. I pull the shirt off, and my eyes fall to her erect nipples, begging for my attention. My tongue flicks over the little buds, and she starts to gyrate against my cock. My whole body ignites, heating up with an undeniable pleasure. I’m the one who groans this time, but I manage to stop her again. My hands plant decisively on her hips, causing her to still. I take the opportunity to let them slide to her ass and squeeze.

“If you move again,” I tell her. “I’m going to thrust inside you twice and come and then we’ll be done for the night.” Her mouth forms a perfect “O” and she keeps shaking her head like I’ve announced the apocalypse. “Now be a good bad girl and stay still while I fuck you.”

Her head reverses course and begins to nod up and down.

I don’t mention that I can’t stay still much longer either. It’s all about perception, and she needs to think I could wait out eternity with my cock nestled firmly inside of her.

After I kiss her lips one last time, I grab onto her ass as tight as I can and buck my hips up. She lets out the most beautiful noise, like I’ve hit a thousand nerves. I do it again, pulsing my cock up and down, up and down. Fast and slow. Up and down. I thrust my cock so deep that she grabs onto me, trying to hold on. I release one of my hands from her hips to place it on her head, bringing her mouth down to mine. We kiss and fuck and when she’s on the brink, I have to slow down so she doesn’t come.

She whimpers against my body, and my breathing becomes ragged as I try to make this last as long as I can. After a while, she presses her lips to my neck, not having enough energy to travel the distance to my mouth. “Please,” she pleads, her voice full of sheer want. “Pleasepleaseplease.” She kisses my collarbone and it’s over at that.

I take her hips in my hands and begin to thrust so hard and fast in her that she starts to shriek. Her waves of pleasure crash into her and flow throw me. She grips the back of my hair, my waist, my arms, my thighs, anything to keep her upright as her orgasm pummels her.

She sinks into my body, and I pull out of her slowly. Exhaustion fills me, and I know this is the hard part. I want her to be satiated; I want one long, rough lay to be enough. One day, I know we’ll get there. But today is not that day.

She is already sliding off my body and kneeling beside my waist. I glance at the clock and gage how much time we have left, and then I feel her take my dick into her palms.

With one hand I gather her hair out of her face, and she sinks her mouth around my cock. My breathing evens out as I watch her tongue lap at the head and lick all the way down the shaft. It’s hot as hell. I close my eyes and relax against her movements. She touches my cock with the perfect amount of force, knowing all the places to suck. And it doesn’t take long before I’m rock hard again. Her movements become faster and more determined. I even hold her head steady when she wraps her lips around my long shaft. Her eyes flit up to mine in a doe-eyed way…and she has my entire cock in her mouth. This, right here, is what turns me on the most.

She begins to move her mouth back and forth again, and I have to pull her off. “But I want you to come in my mouth,” she says.

For fuck’s sake. She does not make this easy.

“Well, I want to come in your pussy,” I retort. “I see we have a predicament. Should we flip for it?”

“No!”

I grin. “I didn’t think so.” I roll her onto her back and my hand slides between her legs, feeling just how soaked she is. I know she’s on the pill, so I don’t bother grabbing another condom. I want to fill her with my cum, to leave myself inside of her all week.

I hover over her body, my eyes on hers. She looks at me like I’m the only man in the world, like she could stay here in this bed forever. We have ten more minutes and that’s it, but I don’t think she’s counting. If her new psychiatrist forces her to be abstinent and this is the last time we can fuck, I’m going to make it worth it. I’m going to make her remember every movement and detail.

I’m going to make this one unforgettable.

{ 42 } LOREN HALE

A lot can happen in one month.

Lily miraculously passed her finals and all her classes, which means she’ll attend Princeton next year as a senior. Only one semester behind. Connor’s emergency tutoring probably had a hand in her success.

The summer has turned fiercer and now at the end of June, we’re all silently praying for rain.

The weather is the only thing I can predict anymore. I thought four weeks would have been enough to dissuade the media and return us to our semi-normal lives. The press may be slightly less ravenous, but cars still sit outside the gates of the house, snapping pictures whenever we leave.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the worst.

We sit in a corner office of a New York City high-rise, and Dr. Oliver Evans gives me one of his patented you’re-not-really-supposed-to-be-here scowls. I didn’t trust Lily to see a new male therapist for her sex addiction, so naturally I tagged along for her first meeting.

Oliver’s theories about sex addiction are a one-eighty from Allison’s, and our initial encounter didn’t go so well. I almost hit the guy and walked right on out. But Lily’s adamant on appeasing her parents and making things right with her family. She wanted to return to these weekly appointments, and the only way I’ll sleep at night is if I accompany her.

So Oliver stares at me like I’m getting on his last psychiatric nerve. He’s forty-something with dark brown hair and rectangular spectacles that make him look more mousy than smart.

“It’s been four weeks,” I remind him. “I thought we’d be friends by now, Oliver.”

He senses my sarcasm and scribbles something in his notebook. This isn’t couples therapy. It’s just supposed to be for Lily, but he often starts writing whenever I start speaking. He thinks it pisses me off, but I just hope he gets a hand cramp.

“Lily, how are you doing abstaining from sex? A month is a milestone for a sex addict. You should be proud.”

She folds her hands in her lap. “It’s been good.”

It was good. For the first couple of weeks, I actually believed we could make a no-sex rule work. But by the third week, she was skittish as hell. She wouldn’t let me sleep beside her, and she flinched whenever someone touched her—not just me. What was once abstaining from sex turned into abstaining from touch. I sensed her withdrawing from me and everyone around her. She wouldn’t leave the house, wouldn’t do normal things. So I cut the cord on that experiment, and it wasn’t because I was horny too.

I knew I was losing my best friend.

I voiced my concerns to Oliver when she first withdrew from my hand. I was just trying to lace her fingers with mine, and she shrunk into herself like I was a monster under her bed. He told me it was natural. That she was returning to the norm. I don’t know what kind of norm this guy lives in, but regular people don’t flinch when they hold hands. It’s not like I was asking her to rub one out for me.

So I made a deal with Lily. She wants to appease her parents, fine. But we’re not listening to this asshole’s advice.

“It’s normal for a deviant like yourself to miss sex.”

He calls her a deviant a lot. It aggravates me, and I’ll spend the next twenty minutes after this meeting telling her all the reasons why she’s not one.

“I do miss it,” Lily lies. “I miss the way it makes me feel.” She felt it pretty damn well last night. She came so hard that she ended up in a fit of laughter afterwards. We tried the abstinence bit. It didn’t work, and we have no more what ifs. We’re finally finding our groove in intimacy, and the only thing standing in our way is this guy.

“We can’t have you missing it, Lily,” he tells her. “The more you dwell on your deviant fantasies, the more you revert back to your deviant ways. You’re just a whore now, but if you let this cycle continue you could become something worse. A pedophile. A sex offender.”

Lily’s head whips in my direction, and she clutches my hand, silently begging me not to lash out. This isn’t the first time he’s basically called her a future pedophile.

“Give me a minute while I gather the tools.” He stands and rummages around his office closet.

Shit.

This is why I don’t want her to stay here. I must wear a pleading look because she says, “I’m fine. We can’t leave.”

“We can actually,” I refute. “There’s the door. Fuck the trust fund.”

“It’s not about the trust fund.” I know.

She trying to fix all the damage she created. She’s even rebuilding a relationship with her father. We still don’t attend those Sunday luncheons, but he calls her after they end to catch up.

Her mother is a different story.

Lily squeezes my hand, and I stare at the way her fingers intertwine with mine. Last week, we wouldn’t have been able to do this. Last week, she would have burst into tears before I touched her.

“Just trust me. It’s like a game,” she says.

I narrow my eyes. “A game in which you get shocked for fun?” I mock gasp. “Are you into the S&M part of BDSM and didn’t tell me?”

She punches my arm, and I grab onto her wrist, pulling her in for a kiss. She’s going to need it.

{ 43 } LILY CALLOWAY

“What did I say about kissing and touching during our sessions?” Dr. Evans says angrily.

I try to subdue my smile as I break away from Lo. “Sorry.” I don’t feel that apologetic. I’m only here for my parents. I don’t believe in Dr. Evan’s methods anymore, and I try my best not to take his words to heart.

But the armor that I’m building still has a few chinks.

Like right now. Dr. Evans holds a small electrical box, and I have the sudden urge to vomit all over his ugly carpet. He sticks two electrodes to the inside of my wrist and then passes me the box. I set it on my lap and rotate the knob to the lowest shock level.

“I think you can go higher than that today.”

“She doesn’t want to,” Lo interjects.

“Make no mistake, Loren, this is my office. I can have you escorted out if I feel like you’re hindering my patient’s treatment.”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly and turn the dial a couple notches. Too bad I don’t have the remote. That device rests in Dr. Evans sweaty palm, the commander of this torture.

“I’ll let you choose what you want to try today. Fantasies or porn.”

“Porn.” Having to relay my fantasies out loud is incredibly embarrassing, and he shocks me more when I start describing positions and body parts.

“Actually, how about we do both.” He reaches into his desk, pulls out a magazine and slides it to me. I set the mag on the armrest between Lo and me, and then I flip it open, already knowing the drill. Nude women don’t make me aroused, but the photographs with the couples do. As soon as I glance at a picture—Buzzzzz!—the shock ripples through my wrist and up my arm.

I let out a short breath and clench my hand. Lo rubs my back, and another shock jostles my wrist. My hand twitches.

“What the hell?!” Lo shouts.

Dr. Evans ignores Lo for the moment. “Look at the pictures, Lily, and describe a fantasy you might have if you were staring at these on your own.”

I instinctively glance at Lo, considering he would be in my fantasy, which is the wrong reaction. The shock pulses through my hand again, and I try to keep my arm still so Lo can’t tell. But he’s breathing heavily beside me, forcing himself in the seat and not at Dr. Evans’ throat.

“Loren, can you please move to the other chair.” Dr. Evans points to a cushiony one in the corner, as far away from me as possible.

Lo opens his mouth, and I have to cut him off. Last time he told Dr. Evans to suck his cock, and I’m not sure that’s going to blow over well a second time. “He’s fine. I don’t even see him,” I say quickly, returning my focus to the pictures.

Buzzzz! I flinch. What did I do?

I’m starting to think Dr. Evans just likes to press that little button.

“Find a picture that’s particularly arousing for you.”

I flip through the magazine, bypassing all the large jugs and vaginas but having no luck. They really don’t make these for women. “Anything?”

“The internet just has a better selection,” I admit, still flipping aimlessly.

“Use this then.” He holds out an electronic tablet. I haven’t been on the internet since Lo banned surfing the web, and the lack of temptation has been nice. My days are easier without it.

I swap the magazine for the tablet and log onto Tumblr. This feels different than browsing through the magazine. Maybe because this has been a staple in my routine. I haven’t looked at mags since high school.

Having Dr. Evans watch me do this is a little personal.

“Find a photograph and describe your fantasy.”

I don’t want to, but I remind myself that my parents have been dealing with more difficult stuff than this. Suck it up, Lily.

I easily land on one that causes me to shift in my chair. A sting pinches my wrist. Fuck. I cringe, and Lo cranes his neck to look at the tablet.

“Talk,” Dr. Evans urges.

It’s a gif of a girl without any pants (or underwear) and a fully clothed guy. We can only see the lower half of the couple, but the guy runs his hand back and forth between her legs. “My fantasy?” I ask, wanting to avoid this portion.

“Yes, what do you visualize when you look at the photo.”

“Lo,” I say, “doing this to me, and then maybe he’d actually put his fingers…in…” Buzz! Buzzz! Buzzzz! “Motherfucker,” I curse under my breath and close my eyes tight.

“Take it easy, Oliver,” Lo sneers.

“Find another, Lily.”

I scroll through the tablet and land on a photograph of a girl’s oiled ass, but large male hands massage her butt and even edge closer and closer to her clit. Holy shit. Buzz!

The shock doesn’t dissuade me from picturing Lo massaging me this way. Maybe he’ll get some ideas from this session. Maybe it’s worth the pain.

But as Dr. Evans shocks me again, all my thoughts morph into shame. I guess, I shouldn’t want to like this. Dr. Evans boosts my fears when he says, “You’re trying not to be deviant anymore. This is bad.” He shocks me one more time and I wince. “Understand that we’re trying to relate these images to a negative stimuli. You should reach the point where these images don’t arouse you anymore. We’re going to shock the whore out of you, one way or the other.”

I give Lo another look but his lip has curled into disgust and he grips the armrest with white knuckles.

The clock ticks languidly.

We have one more hour.

My favorite part of therapy is the ride home. Even though I feel like I’m a million leagues below the sea, Lo never stops talking. He brings me back to the surface.

I press my forehead to the fogged window, rain pelting the glass. After four weeks in a drought, the downpour almost feels like a dream. He flicks on the windshield wipers and navigates the road. “Next session I’m going to call him a whore,” Lo tells me. “Give him a taste of his own fucked up medicine.” His eyes keep flitting to me in concern.

“You’re going to flip us off the road,” I say.

“You’re being quiet.” He merges onto the highway.

“I’m just thinking.”

“About Dr. Oliver Evans’ lack of pornographic magazines for females? What the fuck was he doing giving you a guy mag?”

Though, this was furthest from my mind, I will gladly take the distraction bait. I smile and rotate fully in my seat to face Lo. “You remember in eighth grade when you used to buy me magazines and rip out all the pages with only girl parts?”

He laughs. “It wasn’t all selfless. I thought the more you masturbated the less you’d have sex with actual guys.”

“Huh…” I suppose that makes sense. “Did you know that I used to dump out your bottles of Everclear?” I admit with a grin. The liquor was so strong that he scared me whenever he plucked a bottle from the cabinet. I guess I was too afraid to dissolve our system to actually tell him this, so I did the next best thing.

“I always thought I just didn’t remember drinking them.”

It feels nice to know that we had each other’s backs, even if it seemed like we could care less. “I never told you,” I say softly, “but I was always worried about your health. Your liver…” We don’t usually talk about the risks, at least we never have before. But somehow, banding together to take on evil Dr. Shock Therapy has made us closer in a different way.

He lets out a long breath. “I know you were, Lil. And it’s one of the reasons I can’t drink again.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“We have to take all these kinds of medical tests in rehab, and the doctors basically told me that if I continued down the path I was on, I’d do serious, irreparable damage to my liver.”

My eyes suddenly start to burn, silent tears building. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because I knew you’d be upset and probably blame yourself,” he says, “and it’s not your fault.” He glances at me and then back at the road. “Lil, please don’t cry. It’s really not your fault, and I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“But it could be.” I wipe my eyes and shake my head. “And how can this not be my fault, Lo? I enabled you all our lives. I should have—”

“What?” he says roughly. “What could you have done? Tell me to stop? I wouldn’t have. Physically taken the bottles away? I would have hated you. Tattled to my father? He wouldn’t give a shit. The only person who could have stopped me was me.”

“I could have done something.” I can’t sit here and act like I’m not to blame at all. I supplied him with booze sometimes. I facilitated his addiction.

“You did do something. You were there for me when no one else was.” He drives down another street and turns on the lights as the sun descends. “And Lil…” His eyes meet mine for a brief moment. “If you’re going to blame yourself for enabling me then I have to take fault for enabling you.”

“It’s not the same. Your addiction can kill you.”

“And those men you slept with couldn’t have beat the shit out of you? You couldn’t have contracted an STD or HIV? I let you take those risks and you let me take mine.” He turns a sharp left and I brace myself against the door. “How about we call it even? And then we make a pact to never do it again.”

“Okay,” I say. “Can we shake on it?”

His lips rise mischievously. “We can do better than that.”

Is he thinking what I’m thinking? “Like…”

He laughs. “Well, I saw you staring rather hard at that massage picture.”

Ohhhhh. Yes. No. Wait. “We shouldn’t.”

His brows furrow into a hard line, but he keeps his gaze on the road as the rain falls heavier. “Why not? And you may want to choose your answer carefully. If it begins or ends with the name Oliver Evans, I’m going to eject my seat.”

“It’s deviant.”

Lo lets out a long groan. “Please, for the love of fucking God never say that word again.”

“Well it is.”

“The only thing deviant is what that psychiatrist is putting you through. You shouldn’t be shocked for being aroused by those photographs. I get semi-hard looking at them.”

I frown. “You do?”

“Yes!” he says, half-laughing. “Any human would, Lil. Even if I thought aversion therapy was ethical, which I don’t, I’d only recommend it to people who stare at those photos with violent thoughts. Like rape or child molestation. You’re not a pedophile. The fact that he treats you like one kills me.”

I watch the rain scatter my window as I think this through. It’s not weird to be aroused by them, but it’s wrong to compulsively abuse porn. That sounds right.

“Hey,” Lo says, wanting my attention again. I turn to him, and he gives me a hard look, his eyes flickering between the road and me. “If his therapy methods are fucking with your head, then you’re going to stop.”

“I’m fine, honest. Talking to you helps.”

He grabs my hand and kisses my palm.

“So we went to our respective press conferences, finished publicly apologizing,” I list off. “I’m seeing my new psychiatrist. All we have left is the wedding, and after that I’ll receive my trust fund. My parents should forgive me fully, and everything will turn back to normal—or as normal as we can be.” Once a week, my father actually calls me to catch up. He even told me he was proud that I was seeing this psychiatrist. After everything that I did to his company—the backlash that he’s been through—for him to tell me that he’s proud was enough to cause happy tears. I can’t screw with that.

My mother will take more finesse to win over, and I know she won’t be completely content until the marriage. I can’t afford to stumble anymore.

“What if they don’t?” Lo says softly.

“What?”

“Have you ever thought that maybe, even after you do all of this, that your mother may still not forgive you?”

I shake my head, not willing to believe she could be that cruel. “She has to.”

But the way Lo stares at the road, like he sees a colder future than the warmth I’ve planned, makes me worry.

{ 44 } LOREN HALE

Some days are harder than others. There are days where I don’t even think about alcohol, and then days where my brain circumnavigates around drinking and nothing else.

Today all I can think about is my mother. My real mother. Emily Moore. After my father gave me her address, I often imagine her house, what she looks like, her life without me.

What I do know for certain is that she’s a substitute teacher in Maine. Married. Two kids. When I was little, I rehearsed the same confrontation in my head. I’d stand on the stoop of my birth mother’s house. I’d ask her why she didn’t want me, why she never called or left a note. But in my mind, I was thinking of Sara Hale—not this Emily Moore.

The name has changed, but my questions haven’t. I just have to figure out when to go and who to take with me. Maybe Ryke or Lily, but neither know I’ve been plotting the date to travel to Maine. Ryke will disapprove, thinking I’ve embedded myself further into my father’s world. So I’m leaning towards a trip with Lily.

But I can’t meet Emily today, even if I want to.

Ryke wants to teach me how to rock climb. Not in a gym. Like on a real fucking mountain. I had to ask whether we were going to use ropes and a harness—considering the guy free climbs (he’s stupid enough to scale a mountain with nothing but his hands, legs and some chalk). We’re planning on climbing the normal, sane way. He can do the whole Spider-Man routine when I’m not watching.

I can’t leave until I finish filtering the morning mail with Rose.

The kitchen table overflows with letters, manila envelopes, and small packages.

Paparazzi have sold photos of Lily buying tampons in the grocery store. It’s ridiculous. And her “fan” mail accumulates with each new headline on the cover of a gossip magazine. Most letters are from old men who think she’ll reply or meet them somewhere for sex. That’s what’s been happening lately. People are grabby as hell. I thought that the guy in the hallway of Princeton was just a fluke, but a lot of men feel as though Lily wants all sex, even from them, just because of her addiction. And they make a go of trying to get it from her.

It’s like she has a twenty-four-seven “open” sign plastered to her body now. And there’s no way for her to spin it around to “closed,” which I know she wants to. Thank God she has a bodyguard.

I rip open a couple letters and nearly vomit at a picture of some dude’s balls.

“Shred this one twice,” I tell Rose, throwing the photo into her pile. The shredder rumbles by her feet as she feeds the machine more and more mail.

She glances at the photograph, flips it over and lets out a snort. “I’ll be thinking of you while you touch yourself,” she reads. “Your sentiments are not shared, Mr. Gordon.”

“This guy is living at the State Penitentiary. That makes me feel fantastic.” I toss her another letter and then slice open the packages with a knife.

I really wish we didn’t have to go through this mail at all. I’d much rather burn it without even opening, but some people actually send money. Sometimes as a joke, other times I think they honestly believe Lily will fuck them for cash. Rose, Lily, and I agreed to collect the money and donate it to a women’s shelter in the city. At least someone profits off this.

So Rose and I spend all morning ripping and tearing and shredding. Lily would join us, but Rose and I specifically try to censor her from Mr. Gordon’s balls and company. One day, Lily accidentally opened a letter with photographs attached, and her eyes grew wide in horror, as though the person was one step away from breaking into our house to rape her. I’ve thought about that possibility too, which is why I installed a better security system.

Lil doesn’t admit it, but Rose and I see that she’s afraid to leave the house. She rarely goes out, and when she does, it’s usually after a great deal of pleading.

Lily has accepted my mail-sifting routine with Rose, also calling it our “bonding time.” I haven’t been Rose’s number one fan, not even after the media-palooza went down. But what was once a frost-bitten relationship has surprisingly begun to thaw.

“Since I have to go to business meetings now,” I tell her, “I’m going to need some everyday kind of suits. You still have those black ones from your menswear line, right?”

She goes still and the shredder stops growling. “You don’t have to help me, Loren. I don’t need your charity.” In one month, Rose almost lost every single investor she had for Calloway Couture. Only one has stayed onboard out of sheer loyalty.

I roll my eyes. “It’s not charity. I need suits. Now that you fired a certain someone, yours are no longer plaid and ugly.” I can’t say Sebastian’s name unless I want to be assaulted with rage.

“He did have horrible taste,” she says, lips pursed. As soon as Rose ripped the guy from her life, he snapped a picture of himself for Rich Kids of Instagram and called her a cunt-bag. If you even utter his name, she looks ready to lunge for the ball-cutting shears.

Rose assesses my current wardrobe. A black V-neck and faded Diesel jeans. “You go to your office looking like that,” she reminds me. “Why would you need suits?”

“I have weekly meetings with my father. If I show up in this I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Running my own company terrifies me. I don’t want to pour my heart and soul into it and then have the entire thing destroyed. What Rose is going through—it fucking sucks. Maybe that’s why I’ve preferred apathy all of these years. You can’t be hurt when you have nothing to lose.

She mulls over my proposition and then begins to stuff the shredder again. It rumbles to life. “Fine, but you have to pay full price.”

I laugh. “No family discounts? I’m going to be your brother-in-law.”

“Unwillingly,” she says with cold eyes. Jesus Christ. I’m never going to live that down.

I blame Connor.

He somehow coerced me into revealing my true feelings about this wedding. I admitted to not wanting to marry Lily, not like this at least. I want to do it on our own terms. And somehow Rose has warped that into I don’t want to marry her at all. If I could, I’d be engaged for five more years. She’d be my fiancée and we’d get hitched when we’re both healthy and in love. But that’s not a future that will come true, so I stop trying to imagine it.

I smother that conversation by slitting open a small package. I made the mistake yesterday of reaching blindly into a box. I never, ever want to touch another man’s cum again. Rose couldn’t stop laughing while I soaked my hands in disinfectant for thirty minutes.

I dump the contents onto the plastic-lined table. A neon hot pink dick stares back at me. Without touching it, I slide the dildo into a trash bag.

The next box has what looks like an expensive vibrator, brand-new, wrapped in its original packaging. I leave it on the table as I read the card.

And then an excited squeal resounds from the staircase. Lily sprints down the stairs, her glee-filled eyes pinned to the vibrator.

I grab her around the waist before she can grab it. She points to the package. “That’s new!”

“I’m aware,” I say. “You still can’t have it.”

She cranes her neck. “It’s a Zell500. That’s a luxury brand. You can’t just toss it in the trash.” Her eyes go big. “That’s sacrilege.”

I’m tempted to read her the card: A beautiful toy for your beautiful pussy, my lovely Lily. It’s fucking creepy, and I know it will deter her. But I don’t want to scare her either. That’s what we’re trying to avoid with all of this.

“It’s a vibrator, Lily,” Rose snaps, “not the Holy Grail.”

I give Rose a smile. “So you don’t want it then?”

She glares like she’s ready to put me in the shredder.

I stifle a larger grin and turn to Lily. “Sorry, love. It’s going in the trash.”

She surrenders rather easily. I unhook my arms from her and slide the vibrator into the garbage with the others.

The front door opens, and Ryke saunters into the kitchen, carrying two large vases, white lilies poking his face. As soon as Lily spots the flowers, she slips behind my back and clutches onto my shirt—like whoever sent the floral arrangements are about to jump from the vase and grow life-sized.

“These were by the gate,” Ryke says. “I would have left them, but the paparazzi were trying to get photographs of the cards.” I hold open the trash bag, and Rose suddenly has a fit.

“They’ll break!” she yells at me. “And then the glass will tear the bag, slice someone, and blood will be everywhere. I can’t clean blood out of the hardwood.”

I narrow my eyes. “Just so we have this clear, I rank above the floor.”

“It’s Brazilian cherry,” she says like that makes all the difference. She turns to Ryke. “Throw the vases in the recycling bins in the garage.”

He tips the vases upside down, only the flowers and cards falling into my trash bag. Lily still hasn’t disentangled from my shirt. I gather her hands and intertwine her fingers in mine. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I ask.

Her eyes fix dazedly to the trash bag, and I’m not sure where she’s truly gone. But she’s not in a fantasy. She’s somewhere sadder and darker.

Very softly, she says, “I don’t want lilies at the wedding.”

She’s never referred to it as my or our wedding. It’s always the wedding. Marriage is supposed to be this happily ever after, but for her it feels like a means to an end.

“You don’t have to think about that,” Rose tells her. “It’s not for another year. We’re not even going to plan it anytime soon.”

Ryke nods to me. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, I just need to change out of my jeans.”

“You can change in the car,” he tells me. “I have shorts and stuff in there.” He checks his watch. “I just want to beat a storm that’s supposed to roll in.”

Right because we’re going to be outside. Climbing a mountain. Just don’t kill me, God. That would be so fucking cruel to kill me now.

Before I leave, I kiss Lily lightly. “What are you doing today?” I ask, worried that she’ll spend the afternoon and night bingeing on old cartoons, isolated in the living room. She claims it’s a normal bout of summer laziness, but I know her well.

She can’t be afraid of the world forever.

“I was thinking about going to your office. Maybe get some work done,” she says. My lungs fill with relief. I love that I have chosen a business she can take pleasure in, something that can be both of ours one day. I want her to graduate college first, accomplish what I couldn’t.

“Call Garth,” I tell her.

She crinkles her nose. “He smells like old cheese.”

I grin. I chose the perfect bodyguard. “Don’t leave this house without him.”

“Don’t fall off a giant rock.”

“I’ll return him to you alive,” Ryke tells her.

“You better.” Lily holds a non-threatening finger at him.

He smiles coyly, like he plans on fucking with the ropes or the harness to scare the shit out of me, just to retaliate for the mankini prank in Cancun. I’m a little nervous, but after climbing in the gym with him, the mountain shouldn’t be too difficult, even if he gives me extra slack. I can handle the challenge.

We don’t even make it out of New Jersey before my phone buzzes in the middle console. The word DAD flashing in big bold letters.

“Don’t answer that,” Ryke says.

I’m driving. And I disobey his orders, answering the phone and keeping one hand on the wheel. I feel Ryke’s hot glare without taking my eyes off the road.

“Loren.” My father’s voice sounds through the receiver. “I need you to stop by the house sometime today.” His tone is pretty casual, so I figure the topic centers on my new company. It’s barely on its feet, but he loves to add his opinion.

“I’m heading out of town, so I won’t be anywhere near Philly.”

“Then readjust your schedule.”

“It’s not that easy—”

“I’m not asking.”

Ryke shakes his head repeatedly beside me, probably watching my eyes begin to darken the longer I talk to our dad. “You should have rejected the deal for your trust fund,” he says under his breath.

I pull the speaker away from my mouth to talk to Ryke. “I heard you the hundredth time you said it.”

“You’re his bitch,” Ryke rephrases, as if that’ll make me understand.

I grit my teeth, the highway signs zipping overhead. I need to get off the next exit if I want to see my dad.

I press the phone back to my ear. “What is it about?” I ask him.

“The leak.”

I nearly jerk the car into the other lane, a Trailblazer next to us.

“Lo!” Ryke yells, clutching the door. He snaps on his seatbelt.

Shit. “Sorry.” I start switching lanes, properly this time, heading towards the exit.

“Wait, where are you going?” Ryke asks angrily. He knows I’m heading to Philly. He just doesn’t know why.

I put the phone on speaker, realizing that Ryke will throw a tantrum unless he hears the truth from my father. I set the cell on my lap. “You know who the leak is?” I ask aloud, my heart thrumming. After a month without the knowledge, I was resigned with the fact that it just didn’t matter. Mostly because I didn’t have the energy to hunt down Mason or Aaron and care for Lily. I chose the right option, to be there for my best friend. But I want the information that has eluded us for so long. And the resentful, dark and bitter part of me wants this fucker’s head on a spike.

“Yeah,” he says. “I found the leak.”

“How?”

“The tabloid who first reported the news finally broke and gave us their source. It took five million to loosen their lips and uncover this bullshit.” He doesn’t add you owe me every penny. Even so, I feel like I do.

“Who is it?” I ask, my hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Dad?!” I shout. A car honks, and I realize I swerved into his lane and cut off a pick-up truck.

“Keep your eyes on the fucking road,” Ryke chastises. “Or pull over and I’ll drive.” No, he’ll take us the other direction. And right now, I’m too wired to go climb a mountain

“Is Ryke with you?” my dad asks roughly.

“We’re on our way,” I tell him, ignoring how Ryke is searing a death glare into the phone.

“No, we fucking aren’t,” Ryke refutes.

“You both should come,” he tells us. “This is important, and I don’t want to discuss it over the phone.” He hangs up.

I flick on my blinker and drive along a side street, off the highway.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryke asks.

“He knows who the leak is,” I say like he’s an idiot. “What the fuck are you doing? We’ve spent months trying to track down this asshole.”

Ryke stares at the road with a hard gaze. “Maybe you should drop me off somewhere.”

I frown. “What? Where?” What’s wrong with him?

“Like anywhere but there.”

And then I realize that Ryke hasn’t come into contact with my father since the Christmas Charity Gala. Before rehab. Before everything.

A brutal silence strings though the car. And then I say softly, “Are you scared of him?”

“I can’t stand to look at his face.”

“What did he personally do to you?” I ask.

“I hated him because my mother did,” Ryke says briefly, but I can tell his mind is reeling, so I’m not surprised when he divulges more. “…when I was older, I tried to look at him differently, but she painted a portrait of a monster. So when I stare at his face, that’s all I fucking see.”

His words sink in, and I don’t have anything to say. I can’t change the way he pictures Jonathan Hale. That damage is too deep-seated.

“I tried to forget about him,” Ryke says, staring out the window. “I tried to act like I just didn’t have a dad. And then…” He shakes his head.

“What?” I prod.

“…and then I met you. And all that hate just came back ten times stronger than before.”

I hesitate before I ask. I fear his answer. “Why?” This is where he’ll say I’m just like my father. I’m the monster of the story. The thing to be hated.

“You defend him,” Ryke tells me. “He says some pretty fucking horrible things right to your face, and you just stand there and take it or you walk away. And then the next day, you’ll talk about Jonathan like he’s a fucking savior.” I can’t feel that great burst of relief when he doesn’t compare me to him. I just feel like shit.

I grit my teeth. “What am I supposed to do? Punch him? I wasn’t into the whole let me beat the hell out of my father tragedy growing up. Sorry.”

“You’re right,” Ryke says, surprising me. “You were stuck in that house, with that fucking asshole. But right now, you have the option to leave him. And you’re going back.”

“He’s not all bad.”

“And there you go, sticking up for him again.”

“He’s my father.”

“He’s our father,” Ryke retorts.

I hit the wheel with my hand, nervous and pissed and so fueled right now. “I can’t cut him out of my life!” Not because of the money. Not because of the trust fund or the information I need from him. I can’t leave Jonathan Hale because he’s my family. He’s my dad, and before Ryke and Lily, he’s all I fucking had.

“Pull over for a second.”

“I’m not turning around.”

“Just pull over.”

I drive into a gas station and park the car by the pump. I face Ryke, and my chest rises at the empathy in his eyes. He’s about to drop a bomb on me, but he knows I can take it.

“No one is going to tell you this,” Ryke says. “Everyone says it behind your back, but you’re going to hear it from me, right now.”

I stare at him for a long moment, already hearing his words before he says them. I think I know. I’ve always known.

“Our dad abuses you,” Ryke says, his eyes reddening. “He’s verbally abusive, and he’s fucked with your head.”

I let this sink in, but I’m so numb to the answer. I just nod. “Yeah, I know.”

Ryke nods a few times too, watching me, trying to gauge my mental state. And maybe he’s reliving the fact that he was the older brother, the one who was handed the better deal of two really shitty ones, not having to be raised by him, not having to endure the onslaught of fucking grow up! I didn’t raise you to be such an idiot! Why are you crying? Stop. Fucking. Crying.

“Don’t guilt yourself over this,” I tell Ryke. I feel nothing. I should be red in the eyes like him, but I just can’t be. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah,” Ryke says, nodding again, but he’s more upset than before. “The fact that you believe you can have a real relationship with him fucking terrifies me, Lo. That’s what kills me. And that’s why I don’t want to go there and watch him try to emotionally manipulate you.”

I break his gaze and stare at the wheel. “I’m not asking you to come with me.” My voice is edged but considerably low. “I can drop you off at your house.”

We sit in uncomfortable silence again. For maybe five minutes, both of us just thinking.

And then Ryke says, “If I go, you think he’ll lay off you?”

“Is that even a question?”

Ryke nods. “All right. Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?” He would do that? He’d go stomach a whole hour or two with our father just so the verbal assaults are redirected his way?

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

I don’t know what I’m feeling. My lungs seem to lift from my chest, and I know what word I want to say. I know what word I can’t.

Thank you.

In this moment, I truly feel like I have a brother. One that’s probably too good for me.

{ 45 } LOREN HALE

“You don’t drink?” My father is hung up on this one fact about Ryke. Overhead fans circulate cool air on the patio, and I sit in between Ryke and my dad like someone about to referee an arm wrestle.

“Not since high school,” Ryke says. “I overdid it.” He doesn’t mention how he crashed his car into a mailbox.

“And that’s why you’ve deluded Loren into thinking he’s an alcoholic—because you couldn’t handle your liquor?”

The muscles in Ryke’s jaw twitch. “Get to the fucking point, Jonathan. Who’s the leak?”

My dad leans back in the iron chair, cupping his glass of scotch. “I’ll get to the fucking point when I feel like it. Maybe I want to have lunch with my two sons first.” He presses a button on his phone. “Carter, make three burgers for us.”

“Any preferences, Mr. Hale?”

“The usual.”

“They’ll be right out.” The line clicks.

“I’m not your son,” Ryke says, even though he does, on occasion, call Jonathan his father when he’s trying to make a point. Like in the car. “My mother took full custody of me, in case you forgot.”

“How old are you?” My dad asks mockingly. “Oh wait, you’re twenty-two. In the eyes of the American judicial system, you’re an adult. And as an adult, you’re not your mother’s property like that Ferrari she bought with my money in her goddamn driveway.”

Ryke rubs his jaw in agitation and looks around the patio like he’s trying to find some excuse to leave, but then his gaze drifts to me and he stops searching for that escape.

We can’t go until we find out the leak. And if that means eating a burger with the devil, then so be it.

My father sets his scotch down and focuses on me. “Have you met your mother yet?”

Shit. I can feel Ryke’s confusion and livid heat permeate in the air. “Not yet, I’ve actually been waiting for Lily to…adjust.”

“You’re going to meet your mother?” Ryke asks, accusation lacing the words.

My father doesn’t cut in, which means he’s curious about our relationship, wondering how close we’ve become these past months.

“Yeah,” I say.

Ryke shakes his head. “How long have you had her name? How’d you find her?” And then realization floods his face, looking between our dad and me. “You two have been speaking this whole time…” But his hate is redirected at Jonathan. “Can’t you leave him alone for one minute?”

“He wanted to know who his mother was. It’s not your place or mine to make that decision for him.” He sips his scotch casually, incensing Ryke more.

“I don’t care about that. I care that you used that information to draw him back in. I care that you push him to drink.”

“Ryke…” I start and then stop, not wanting to defend my father. Not now. “I was going to tell you that I started talking to him.”

“When? When I find you in the hospital bleeding from your stomach because you drank?”

My father groans. “You’re not still taking that ridiculous pill.”

Ryke turns on him. “It’s not a fucking joke.”

“It is,” my dad says. “You’re making him soft.”

“Yeah, you made sure he was fucking sharp, didn’t you?”

“Stop, both of you,” I say coldly. “I don’t want to talk about alcohol or Emily.”

“Fine,” my father says and stands to replenish his glass. “What do you do Ryke? Or are you like your mother, gobbling up all my money on furniture and clothes?”

“How about we leave my mother, the woman you fucking cheated on, out of the conversation as well.”

“Forgive me if I don’t like the bitch,” he says. “I always wanted you two to meet, and because I wanted it, she could barely tolerate the idea. And here you are, closer than ever. It’s as if it was always meant to be.” He grins, as if he set fate into motion.

“It wasn’t your doing,” Ryke refutes. “I didn’t meet Lo because of you. I met him because I wanted to.”

My father rolls his eyes dramatically. “I can’t ever win with you. Ever since you asked me some silly goddamn question and you didn’t like the answer.”

“I was fifteen,” Ryke sneers. “I just found out I had a brother. I felt lied to and cheated on. I needed your compassion and you fucking spit in my face. But I guess I should have known better.”

“You didn’t need compassion.” My father grimaces at the word. “You needed the truth, and I gave it to you. It’s not my fault you were too weak to handle it.”

“What are you guys talking about?” I ask, hesitating. Maybe I shouldn’t know. But I hate being in the dark.

My father is quick to answer. “Ryke asked me a simple question that day. Would you like to tell him, Ryke?’

“Fuck you,” Ryke sneers.

“I suppose not.” He takes a small sip from his drink, smacking his lips before he continues. “He asked me if I could take back the day that I fucked your mother—take back having you—would I?”

My throat goes dry, not expecting that. I think I know his answer. Because even in his hatred, his bigotry and vileness—there is one fact that my father has never let me question.

He loves me.

And it’s a fucked up love. Ryke is right. It does mess with my head. And it’s something I have so much trouble walking away from. Sometimes I don’t want to. Other times, it’s all I dream about.

My father’s eyes hold this unbridled clarity, unwavering from mine, the haziness of his drink gone to honesty. “I told Ryke that I would do it all over again. I have zero regrets, in this lifetime or the next.”

Zero regrets.

That’s what I pick out from that. Zero regrets. Not even when he grabbed me by the neck, not when he called me a shitty fuck at ten years old. Not when he made me feel like I was never good enough to be his son. Zero regrets.

Right.

No one says anything more at first. Ryke is probably worried that I resent him. He wished I wasn’t alive. But truth is, I kind of did too. Until I looked at Lily. Until I talked to her. I don’t think I could have survived this life without that girl.

I redirect the conversation to Hale Co., which my father only likes to discuss in small quantities. The company took a minor hit in comparison to Fizzle, but he’s still working on launching a new baby product. Something about cribs. It’s ironic that the world’s worst dad has a fortune from baby things, but since it was my grandfather’s business first, it makes the irony less valid. Unless he was an alcoholic asshole too.

The burgers arrive when he says, “This marriage helps Fizzle, but do you know what would really benefit Hale Co.?”

Ryke freezes, the lettuce falling out of his bun.

I must be slower because I don’t get it. “What?”

My father cuts through his burger with a knife, juices oozing out. His eyes find mine. “It’s a baby merchandize company. Babies would help.” I can’t breathe. “Little Hale babies in little Hale onesies. It would be great goddamn marketing.” He takes a bite of his burger. “You can’t beat that.”

“No,” I say instantly. My blood feels like it’s on fire. I have been coerced into marrying Lily. I’m not going to have children because my father tells me to. There has to be a line somewhere.

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“I said no. Not now. Not in a fucking year. Not ever.”

My father sets down his silverware and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Is this a new development?”

“No.”

“Is something wrong?” he frowns. “Are you sterile?”

“For fuck’s sake,” I snap. I didn’t think I’d have to discuss this with him. “I don’t want kids. It’s not because I can’t have them. I don’t want them.” I don’t want them to turn out like you. Or me.

Ryke stays quiet, but I can tell he’s processing. The only person I told was Lily. That’s the only one who mattered.

“You’ll change your mind,” my father says like he knows me so well. He picks up his knife again. “And it’s okay if it’s not anytime soon. Hale Co. can wait.”

We finish eating and after all the tense conversations, it’s hard to remember why we were here in the first place. One of the servers clears the last dish, and I ask the question. “Who’s the leak?”

“That, I can’t tell you,” he says.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Ryke growls, saying exactly what I’m thinking.

My father ignores Ryke. “The good news is that I have it under control, and it’s being handled quietly. If I tell you two, I’m sure you’ll cause a fucking mess that I won’t be able to clean.”

I don’t agree with him. I can’t. “I need to know,” I refute. “This isn’t some guy who did me wrong or fucked me over in a small way.”

“You won’t change my mind, Loren.”

“Why’d you tell me to come here then?!” I shout, blindsided by all of this. We sat here for nothing.

“To have lunch with you and to tell you that you need to drop this. Let it go.”

I spring up from the table like my soles are on fire. “Let it go?!”

My father glowers. “Loren, you’re overacting.”

“Lo,” Ryke says, rising and resting a hand on my shoulder.

“Overreacting?” I let out a manic laugh. “I have a girlfriend at home who’s scared to walk out of the fucking house without getting assaulted. And I’m overacting? It took her a month to stop tossing and turning at night.” I grip the chair. “She has men mailing her goddamn plastic penises from prison and alleged sex tapes being rumored every day. This bastard toyed with her for weeks, texting her vile things before he finally leaked it. And you have his fucking name!”

My father is on his feet. “And what the hell are you going to do? Yell? Shout? Stomp your shoes and make noise?” His eyes grow dark. “There is nothing you can do that I haven’t already done. It’s over. Let. It. Go.….please.” His voice has softened considerably, and I pale.

Please. He doesn’t use that word, and I know what I have to do.

I have to trust him.

But I don’t know who he’s protecting—me or himself.

{ 46 } LILY CALLOWAY

Garth must have been ex-CIA or a stunt driver on some Hollywood lot before becoming a personal bodyguard. He lost the paparazzi tailing us within two minutes. It usually takes me a solid hour driving in aimless circles, and I get so bored that I make stops at The Donut Man for jelly-filled pastries. Now that I think about it, maybe the donuts are the reason it takes me so long.

Lo has tried to conceal the location of his office from the press. For now, it’s the one place void of cameras peeping through windows or gates. Being here makes me feel normal again.

I kick my feet on his desk and lean back in the nice leather chair. Garth is broad-shouldered, his peppery hair receding and his forehead oily. He sits on the couch, currently transfixed by his mini-tablet. We don’t talk much other than to discuss where I want to go, which is fine with me. Talking can be overrated.

Lo’s office has more personality than our bedroom. Posters of his favorite science fiction and superhero movies line the walls: Battlestar Gallactica, Star Wars, X-Men (of course), Spider-Man (the Andrew Garfield version), and Kick-Ass.

We ate up a whole day just stocking the bookshelves with all his comics, organizing them by issue. When he told his father he wanted to start a comics publishing company, he probably expected Jonathan to laugh in his face, tell him to grow up, and find a serious job. But no, his dad signed a check and wanted a formal business plan the next day.

I thumb through one of the manuscripts out of the large pile. Lo has to read original comics (not all good) and choose which ones he wants to publish for Halway Comics. He lets me read them if he’s on the fence, but when I graduate from Princeton, I won’t be helping him with this side of the business.

I focus on the comic in hand. The art is surrealistic with a satirical edge. Some of the people even have dog heads. And some of the humans are drawn with animal feet. Lo can find the meaning behind most comics, but my brain just sees a dog-man with a big butt.

The comics I gravitated towards are more realistic and classical, like ones where the superheroes can spring from the page and fit in our world. Lo will try anything and everything, even panels that contain black dots and no words. I do love sexy superheroes, but those are hard to find in indie comics publishing. The most I’ve seen are sexy-clad characters that look like they’ll murder me in my dreams.

I sift through his pile and find a more realistic comic. Not superheroes, but it’s a noir strip with a detective as the lead. I flip through the pages to look at the pretty art.

Ahhh! I throw the manuscript on the floor and cover my eyes with my hands.

There is nudity in that comic book! And I’ve sworn off porn.

“Everything okay, Lily?” Garth asks.

“Yeah,” I croak. “I’m just gonna…go downstairs.” I bypass the dirty comic book on the ground and slip out of the room. I take the winding staircase down to the main level.

The first floor.

My dream.

I enter the store from the back (Employees Only) entrance and into the dimly lit space. Red linoleum booths hug the walls and windows, plastic wrap covering their cushions. The appliances and furniture are all hidden behind smocks, and I can still smell the fresh coat of warm gray paint on the walls. Red and gray and a bit of blue. I picked the color scheme, even after Lo warned me that the palette fit Captain America. We’ve been anti-Cap since he threw Wolverine out of an airborne plane.

I still love it.

Rows of low shelves create aisles and resemble a video store, but they’re going to be filled with comic books when the shipments arrive. The front area is sectioned with a small kitchenette for pastries and coffee. Not everything is here in the store yet. And it’ll be months before the place is ready to be opened for the public.

Lo pitched Superheroes & Scones to his father as a marketing strategy for Halway Comics. But I know the idea has nothing to do with his company. What he did was buy me something of my own, something I could look forward to after college. He found me happiness, and I think it’s worth more than any silly engagement ring.

A store that sells coffee, scones, and comic books.

It’s perfect.

And for once, we’re doing something good with our inheritance rather than wasting it away. For two people unwilling to let anyone in, sharing this intimate part of our lives—the nostalgic happiness of comics—has to mean something.

While we’re under construction, I can hide out in one of the plastic-wrapped booths with a comic, like my own secret getaway.

Someone knocks on the door, and I jump out of my skin. I can’t see the figure since the glass is shrouded in COMING SOON posters. It doesn’t even say what’s coming, and the building looks equally as closed and deserted with more ads all over the brick. For all anyone knows, this could be a future porn shop. Oh jeez. Now I can’t stop thinking about porn.

The rapping on the glass continues, and I take a tentative step towards the noise. The figure is shadowy and indistinguishable. But the shape looks tall enough to be a guy.

What if it’s the press? Or worse.

A stalker who stalked me here.

The knocking is louder and more persistent. I end up scurrying underneath the nearest booth before my heart abandons my chest. Maybe he didn’t see me. Maybe he’ll just go away.

If it’s someone I know, they’d call me, right? I pat my pockets for my phone. Oh no. I left my cell on Lo’s desk, along with Garth. Well Garth is not on Lo’s desk (at least I hope not), but he’s definitely upstairs, consumed with his mini-tablet.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Those knocks sound mean.

I scuttle further underneath the table, curling my knees to my chest. I imagine the glass shattering, the man barging his way through. Should I scream for Garth or just pretend not to be here?

Garth makes the decision for me. His hefty boots pound their way across the store, and the lock clicks, the door jangles, and the stalker is met with my intimidating bodyguard. That should deter him.

“Where’s Lily? I’ve been trying to call her.” The voice is calm, smooth, familiar and so very very unthreatening.

“I’m right here!” I crawl out from under the booth and dust the cobwebs off my kneecaps. Connor raises his eyebrows, as if he knows exactly what I was doing under there.

Garth must be confused because he (truly) says, “What were you doing under there?”

“I thought I saw a…rat,” I say quickly, “so I was inspecting the area to lay some traps later.” Before they can foil my lie, I turn to Connor. “What brings you to S&S?” I really should not try to shorten the name because every time I say it, I immediately think of S&M. My mind has dangerous side roads.

“Lo wants me to look over a contract. He said he left it in his office.” He gazes at me with a little more concern than I appreciate from Connor Cobalt. I like his self-satisfaction much better.

“Okay, I’ll bring you back there.” I add to Garth, “Can you stay here? Watch the door?” I try to smother the worry in my voice, but I fear I’m not doing a good job.

“Of course.”

In Lo’s office, I flick on the lights, and Connor targets the file folder on the desk. I find my dinky flip phone and scroll through all the missed calls from Connor.

“So who did you think I was?” Connor asks as he opens the file and sinks into the leather chair.

“What?”

“This is a new building. I don’t think rats have moved in yet. So obviously you were hiding from whoever you thought was at the door.” He’s too astute for his own good, and I’m sure he already knows the answer to his own question.

I pick up a Black Widow action figure on Lo’s bookshelf. “I wish I was Rose,” I say softly.

“Why is that?” She wouldn’t be so scared.

“She’d handle this better than me. She doesn’t even have a bodyguard.” I want that kind of confidence, but I just don’t think it’s something a twenty-year-old can learn. I’m too late.

“There’s a difference between courage and pride. Believe me, I’d sleep better at night knowing she had a bodyguard.”

“She is alone a lot,” I say. How can she not be brave? She’s willing to face the swarming paparazzi and media-hungry press by herself every day.

“Yes, but that girl would rather carry her own Taser than let someone else defend her, all to prove a point. So when she meets an adversary twice her size and in a much larger quantity, she’s going to realize that some battles are best fought with a sidekick.”

“Oh,” I say, finally understanding, thanks to his superhero analogy. My sister is not a team player. She’d rather do things on her own.

“While my talents are immeasurable, I don’t have the power to save her from halfway across the city,” Connor says. “And our relationship is a bit different from yours.”

“That’s an understatement, I think.”

He smiles. “Yes, it is.” He closes the folder. “What I mean to say is that I’m trying not to be afraid for her. Since we were teenagers, she has always looked to me for reassurance, even if she won’t admit it. I’m her…rock.” He stares off as he finds the right words. “The…unwavering thing. Confident, poised, unrelenting and annoyingly persuasive. If she sees that I’m frightened, she’ll gloat on the outside, as though I lost a round of chess, but internally she’ll begin to question herself. And I don’t particularly like when Rose loses her confidence and becomes less self-assured. She’s more vulnerable, and it breaks my heart.”

This is brand new honesty for Connor Cobalt, no insults hidden beneath the words. It’s just…the truth, from the soul. I kind of like it.

“Do you love her?” I ask, returning the action figure and taking a seat on the couch.

He flips the folder back open and reads the contract in his brisk, super-human manner, turning the page faster than I can read a magazine on a toilet. “Love is irrelative to some.” He dodges my question with a strange answer. As he concentrates on the contract, he begins closing the door on his brief openness.

I squint at him as I realize something else. “How come you don’t say wicked anymore?”

He briefly tears his eyes from the papers. “What are you talking about?”

“You used to say ‘wicked smart’ and ‘wicked cool.’ It was my favorite thing about you.” His lingo has changed since I first met him. Not completely though. I mean, when we run into someone he knows, he’ll sometimes throw out a ‘hey, bro.’

His lips rise. “I usually dumb down around the intellectually deficient so I don’t come off like a complete prick.” I think he just called me stupid. “But I see you as a true friend, so I’ve backed off some of the pretenses. Most people wouldn’t be able to stand all of me.”

“Can Rose?” I ask, still trying to process everything he’s saying.

His lips just lift higher. I suddenly come to the conclusion that I won’t ever know what Connor Cobalt really sounds like in his head—what words he finds abhorrent, what he thinks of certain situations, his real honest reactions that aren’t half-insults and half-something a little nicer. Maybe Rose already knows him. Or maybe she’s just as clueless as the rest of us.

I stick to a safe subject. “So next semester, you’ll be at Wharton and Rose will be in New York.” They both graduated from college in May (along with Ryke), and we threw a small celebration for all of them a couple weeks ago.

Connor’s dream came true—an acceptance to Penn’s prestigious Wharton School of Business for his MBA. Rose always scoffed at grad school. She thinks it’s just a piece of paper to brag over, at least for someone who’s an heir to a fortune. So she’ll spend her time at the Calloway Couture office in New York City, commuting from Princeton, New Jersey.

“That’s the plan,” Connor says.

I’m worried for them, and I know neither Rose nor Connor would appreciate my concern. But long distance relationships are difficult, and I can see all the drives back and forth not being worth the trouble—especially if Rose continues to struggle with her intimacy issues. She conquered sleeping in the same bed as Connor during Cancun, but she has yet to make the leap to sex.

I want her to find love and the fireworks, but nothing I do or say will change her problems. I’m just her little sister, and a broken one in her eyes.

Connor’s gaze falls to the floor where a comic book is splayed—the page opened to a pair of giant naked boobs and an erect penis. “Lily.”

“I wasn’t looking at it!” I defend. “I mean, I was, but then I wasn’t.” I grimace. How can speaking be this hard? I take a deep breath and realign my thoughts. “I was flipping through it and then when I came upon the…” I frown. “…genitals. It burned my eyes and magically flung from my hands.”

“I’ll forgive you for the hyperboles if you’re telling the truth.”

“I am! Cross my heart.” I start drawing crosses over my heart with my finger, but then I get confused. “Am I supposed to draw Jesus crosses or X’s?”

“Sometimes I wonder if we speak the same language.”

“X’s,” I say with a nod, ignoring his slight. “Definitely X’s.”

He returns to the contract, and I sidle to the window, peeking through the blinds to check for paparazzi or sketchy men lurking on the side street.

I don’t know how to vanquish this fear. I have an overwhelming desire to hide in the bathroom and masturbate my anxiety away. But I want to feel like I did in Cancun. Safe and not so crazy compulsive. I yearn for that stasis again.

My new therapist doesn’t seem equipped to help me, and I can just imagine his methods to combat this fear, a monster-sized shock machine in hand. So I refuse to share my anxieties with him.

But I won’t drown in self-love either. I’m going to try something new, and just wade in my unease until I figure out how to handle the close scrutiny and media properly. Until I figure out how to breathe again.

{ 47 } LOREN HALE

I feel like a creep.

Sitting in my rental car for an hour and staring at the same four-story brick house. The lawn has newly mowed lines, a sign poking from the grass: McAdams Middle Honor Student.

Maine carries a breeze that beckons people outdoors, but I’m still rooted to the seat, my joints frozen solid. My biggest fear is staying in this damn sedan, coming this far and not mustering the courage to walk up the driveway.

I can smash a bottle of liquor on another guy’s door, but I can’t put one foot in front of the other to say hi to a woman. There’s irony somewhere in that. And maybe if I wasn’t scared out of my fucking mind, I’d laugh.

I rub my neck that gathers with nervous heat. I should have brought Ryke and Lily like I originally planned. When I told Lily I was looking into meeting my mother, she was nothing but supportive. They both wanted to come.

But I ended up only buying one plane ticket.

I have to do this on my own.

No one has entered or exited the house. From the outside it resembles a normal middleclass family home. It’s what I could have had. Normal.

I let out a long breath and run my hands through my hair. Just go. Just get it over with, you fucking bastard.

Before I can process what I’m doing, I climb from the car and reach the mailbox. I breathe like I’m in the middle of a five mile jog. Inhale. Exhale. One…two…three. But I’m not sprinting. I’m not running. I’m barely walking.

My worn sneakers land on the front stoop. My legs weigh me down. My shoes, however ugly, are filled with lead.

I raise my fist to the door, falter and drop my hand to my side. Come on. Do it. I’ve replayed conversations in my head, thinking about this moment for years. Come on, Loren. Grow the fuck up.

Inhale. Exhale.

One…two…

I ring the doorbell.

The door opens. And my mind goes blank.

A woman stares at me with an identical stunned and stupefied expression. I never called her, never warned her about this meeting. I was too scared that she’d shut me down. I just wanted to see her face, hear her voice, all at the same time.

She’s young, not even forty. I search her features: slender nose, thin lips, and shiny brown hair. I suddenly realize I’m looking for me in her.

“I’m—”

“I know who you are.” Her voice is velvet, the kind you can close your eyes and fall asleep to. I bet she reads her kids bedtime stories. The thought knots my stomach. “I’ve seen you on the news.”

I wait for her to invite me in, but she grips the knob like she’s seconds from swinging the door in my face.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

I’m not sure what reaction I expected. My dad—he told me that she didn’t want me. I thought, maybe, he was lying. I still grasp to that futile hope that she cared for me like a mother would a son.

Inhale. “I just wanted to talk.” My voice sounds coarse compared to hers. Like an animal to an angel. It fucking sucks. And I can’t stop staring at her, like she’s moments from being ripped from my memory.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes carry apologies even if her words don’t.

“Right,” I say and nod to myself. I could walk away. I could leave it at that. I’ve seen her. What else do I need? What the fuck am I searching for? “You’re my mom.” I want to take back the words as soon as I say them.

She cringes, the door shrinking closed, but she stays beside it, wedged between the frame. And she stares at me like I’m a mistake, a black mark on her resume that she’s been trying to scrub clean. She doesn’t say it, but I can see the phrase all over her face. You’re not my son, not really.

She didn’t raise me. I was a bad part of her life that she’s been trying to forget.

She clears her throat, uncomfortable. “Did Jonathan tell you anything?”

“Not much.”

“Well…what do you want to know?”

The open-ended question takes me aback for a second. What do I want to know? Everything. I want all the answers that have been kept from me. “What happened?”

“I was a teenager…” She glances over her shoulder for a minute and then says, “I was young and was easily drawn to a guy like Jonathan. We slept together once. That’s it. And I was careless, and that’s why you’re here.”

Something nasty sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow down the more spiteful retort. I sweat through my shirt, so fucking hot. I wipe my brow and say, “So that’s what I am to you then?”

Her eyes flit past my body. A neighbor across the street stares hard from his mailbox, and I wonder if he’s trying to place me—figuring out where he recognizes me from.

“You can invite me in,” I offer.

She shakes her head and clears her throat again. “No. It’s best if you stay outside.”

“Right.” That’s all I can say without yelling, without screaming everything that weighs on my chest. Why didn’t you come back for me? Why didn’t you fucking care? I’m your goddamn son! I spent years without a mother, without that maternal figure. The most I had were the people who paraded in and out of my house in the mornings. Makeup-smeared, half-dressed women who had no words of wisdom for me, no answers to my problems, no sweet, nurturing voice to ease me to sleep.

“You have to understand…” Her eyes fall to the ground. “I didn’t want you.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I say sharply. My father was right. I shouldn’t have sought her out.

“I was in high school,” she says. “I was just a girl, and I planned to go to college, to have boyfriends and a life. You were going to take all of that from me.”

You were going to take all of that from me. The words ring in the pit of my ears.

I stare at the bright sky, just staring, just looking for something that will never reveal itself to me.

What the hell am I doing here? Not just here, at this house. I feel like I was born to destroy people’s lives. I did it before I even came into the world. And I did it after. You were going to take all of that from me.

“Out of respect for Jonathan, I told him that I was going to an abortion clinic.”

I shut my eyes, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. I wipe it. Exhale. “I wish you went through with it,” I suddenly say. Because then I wouldn’t have to bear this pain. My face wouldn’t twist this way. Lily wouldn’t have spent her childhood in my broken house. Her mother would have loved her as much as she did her sisters. Ryke would have grown up with two parents instead of one. My existence ruined so many people, so many things. Life would have been easier without me.

“What?” Her velvety voice spikes.

“You heard me,” I say, no longer nice. “I wish you would have killed me.”

She pales. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me. “Because…your father, he gave you everything.”

You have everything, Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.

“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold feet?”

“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought you would be happy.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”

I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted. The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex addict girlfriend.

Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.

Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go inside please?”

Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”

I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.

And then it hits me fully.

She’s my half-sister.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”

Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”

Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.

And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean backpack. Mutant & Proud. What are the odds? “You like X-Men?”

“The cartoons,” she says. “X-Men: Evolution.”

“My girlfriend likes those too.”

“You mean your fiancée? I just read in Celebrity Crush that you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”

“Yep, it’s true.”

Her eyes brighten like she’ll have something good to tell her friends tomorrow at lunch.

Emily widens the door so her daughter can pass. “Willow, inside please.”

Willow examines me with an inquisitive gaze before she resigns to her mother’s pleas. And then she slips indoors and out of sight.

“You named your daughter after a Buffy character?” Maybe we like the same things, I stupidly think. Probably because Willow strangely does.

She frowns. “What?”

“The televisions show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” She’s still confused. “Never mind.”

“What do you want, Loren?” she finally asks. “What did you think would happen by coming here?” Her voice lowers and the door begins to close so I can’t see past her body and into her house. I can’t see the life that I never would’ve had. “You’re twenty-one. You’re an adult.”

“You’re not my mother. I think I got it,” I say roughly. I hate that I don’t hate her. Not even a little bit. I take a step back, my eyes flitting over the house, over something that I don’t want to destroy. I ruin everything I touch.

And I’m not going to mess up her life. Even if mine is all fucked up. Right as I’m about to leave this all behind, something else catches my eye in the window.

A girl. A child. No older than two or three. She peers through the glass, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. I see me. Growing up and being lied to. Never knowing about my brother and finding the answers in the most jarring, horrific way. The secrets. The betrayal.

I face Emily again. She seems at peace with her decision and her life, but she’s repeating the same mistake as my father. As Sara Hale. She doesn’t see it now, but the lies she weaves will eat at her family from the inside out.

“You should know,” I say, “that even though I’m not your son, I’m still their brother.”

Her lips press in a line.

But I keep speaking. “And maybe you don’t see it like that, but take it from someone who’s been in their situation before—they will.” I think of Ryke. “I’m not saying that you have to tell them about me now or anytime soon, but they’ll find out eventually. If not from the press, then from some stranger, and they should hear it from you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says shortly. “Anything else?”

Fuck you. I can’t say it though. I don’t really feel it. More like, Fuck me. For being so stupid. For thinking you’d care.

I shake my head, everything draining from me like I’ve been slit open on the sidewalk. I take another couple steps off the stoop, glance up at the three-story brick house. Middleclass family. Happy. Normal.

I turn around and never look back.

{ 48 } LILY CALLOWAY

With Lo in Maine, he wanted me to skip my therapy session with Dr. Evans today, but the therapist called me and said that if I skip, he’d contact my parents and tell them how poor my progress has been. So I sit alone in Dr. Evans’ office, constantly checking my phone. Lo said he would call after he sees Emily. If their meeting doesn’t go well, I’m worried that he may choose to escape with alcohol. I really wanted to go, but at his request, I’ve stayed here.

Dr. Evans applies the electrodes to my wrist and hands me the small black box with all the wires poking out. He nestles behind his desk in his seat, wearing a smug look. He loves the fact that Lo isn’t here to interrupt the session.

“So are we doing magazines again?” I fidget in my seat, a little nervous to be doing this with only Dr. Evans in the room. When Lo’s here, it feels less weird.

“I think we should move on to another compulsion today.”

I try to wrack my brain. What else could I conquer with aversion therapy besides fantasies and porn?

His eyes drop to my thighs. “It would have been easier if you wore a dress or skirt, but I think you can manage.”

My heart bangs against my ribcage. Maybe I heard him wrong.

“I want you to masturbate. You’ll be shocked until your brain responds to the negative stimuli.”

Oh my God.

My head moves on its own accord, shaking fiercely from side to side. “No,” I blurt out. “No way.” I am not masturbating in front of him!

“Lily, your parents hired me specifically,” he explains. “This is what works. You need to condition your mind to recognize masturbation as a bad impulse.”

My parents are my weakness. I have vocalized that I’d do anything to fix what I’ve done. But how far am I willing to go?

“Is there anything else I can do today?” I ask.

He mulls this over, fingers by his temple in thought. “I suppose we can try something else,” he says to my relief.

Dr. Evans stands and walks to the front of his desk, he leans his butt on the edge, the remote still in one hand. The other falls to his zipper. Oh fuck. This is not the something else that I had in mind!

“What are you doing?” I croak, frozen in my chair.

“Whores like you are obsessed with male genitalia. You’re going to look at it, touch it, suck it and I’ll shock you until you’re nice and normal.”

“No.”

Rose found my perfect therapist, Dr. Banning, after meeting with horrible ones. And I wonder if she had to put up with situations like this for me, just so I would avoid it. I know she did. I know because I remember the look Connor and her shared when they were discussing therapists they visited together.

Dr. Evans is already tugging down his silver zipper, and his dick emerges from his khaki pants. My hands shoot to my eyes as the familiar buzzzz pulses in my skin.

I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m not here. Not really.

The room quiets, and I think maybe I’ve won.

And then I feel it. On my leg.

I jump up like my entire body has been electrocuted this time. The shock box falls to the floor, ripping out the wires that connect to the electrodes on my arm. I stumble back, my eyes bugging. Dr. Evans closes the distance between us, right in front of me. I refuse to drop my gaze to his dangling penis.

“Get away from me,” I sneer. I’m not about to fall to my knees with my tongue lagging out of my mouth. I’m not the same girl who’d fuck everything away for a quick high. I’m stronger. Even without Lo. I know that now.

Dr. Evans shoos my threats, and he grabs my wrists. His mouth finds my ear. “You will sit down and comply, or I’ll tell your parents just how much of a whore you really are.”

Tell them, is my first thought. I won’t sacrifice my own pride, my own dignity for them. Nothing in the world is worth the shame that I will feel from this. Nothing.

I stare right back and all my hate and resentment towards everyone that has vilified me as a slut or whore rumbles up in two words. “Fuck you.”

His grip tightens and I realize how small I am compared to him, compared to any man. I might as well be a bag of bones. I take a deep breath and scream, “GARTH!”

Dr. Evans presses a hand over my mouth and his other hand starts descending to my shorts. “If you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do it for you.”

I fight back and struggle against his hold, trying to bite and kick, but he ends up pinning me back into the seat. His hand rests in between my legs, pressing the spot over my pants. I can’t stop screaming against his palm.

The door whooshes open and before he can do anything else, my bodyguard bounds over and throws him back against his desk. I shake like a trembling leaf, but I’m on my feet and in one piece. Garth jostles Dr. Evans like a stuffed doll. He looks ready to annihilate the man, so I’m surprised when he releases his grip. “You’ll be hearing from Greg Calloway’s lawyers. I’d advise you to pack up your office today.”

Garth turns to me and gives me a sympathetic, almost apologetic, look. I’m just glad he was here. Lo was right about the bodyguard.

He ushers me out of the room, and I glance back for one last image of my evil therapist. My heart does not slow down just yet. I think…I think I’m in shock a little bit. I can’t close my eyes or blink.

Dr. Evans slumps down to the ground and stares dazedly at the wires from the shock box.

“Are you okay?” Garth asks in the lobby.

“I think so.” I’m trying to sparse through my emotions. I feel less like a wilted flower, but mostly, I just can’t stop breathing so quickly. I rub my wrist. Yep, I’m in shock.

“Back home?” he wonders.

“Can we make a stop first?”

He nods and we drive a few blocks over to another high-rise. My hands still shake, but they also feel a little disconnected from the rest of my body. When we arrive at the office, I knock on the door, my breathing on a slow descent.

The door swings open, revealing a woman with a black bob and warm smile. I haven’t seen her in almost two months. I don’t realize how much I missed her until her arms are around my shoulders, and mine are around hers. Tears prick my eyes.

“Oh, Lily,” she says, “we have lots to talk about.”

Yes, we do. I know what good guidance looks like now, and I’ll never let it go.

I wipe my eyes, about to tell her that I want to reinstate our sessions. But something else tumbles from my mouth. “Do you think I can call you Allison?”

“I’d like that very much.”

{ 49 } LOREN HALE

The plane lands in New York. I don’t go home. I end up at a parking lot of a local bar. Cold. Alone. Stuck with my own thoughts. It’s a dangerous game.

I grip the steering wheel, pain cutting through me like sharp knives. I can’t stop seeing Emily’s contorted face, one full of unease—uncomfortable, wishing I would just go the hell away. I lost my mother again, but that’s a stupid thought. I can’t lose something that I never had.

I pinch my eyes and scream, my throat burning. I need to run. I need to push these feelings away. I hear my father in the back of my head. I hear Emily. I hear the press, the media. You have everything, Loren. Why the fuck are you crying? Look around, what could you possibly be sad about?

Nothing. I’m not allowed to be upset, to feel anything but gratitude. I am privileged. I am rich. My eyes skim the bar, the OPEN sign flashing in neon blue. I am a rebellious new adult, needing attention. Right? That’s what this is. Alcohol will draw every eye to me, make people pity me. Make them feel sorry.

That’s not it, I think. Alcohol will drown my warring thoughts. Alcohol will shut out every voice in my head.

It will also fuck everything else up.

I don’t know what to do. I’m going out of my goddamn mind. I slam my palm into the steering wheel, another scream knotted in my throat, and the tears I stifled suddenly stream down my face. I couldn’t say no to my father, I couldn’t stop the leak, and my mother never really wanted me—not even now. I always fail. Always.

My hands tremble as I slip out my cell and dial a number quickly. I just want to hear her voice. I press my forehead against the wheel, no more energy to even keep my head upright.

“Where are you?” Lily asks with worry. “You were supposed to call hours ago. Your flight landed, right?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way home,” I lie.

“Are you still in New York? We can meet up for dinner,” she offers, probably not buying my lie.

“Why do you love me, Lil?”

“Lo, really, where are you?” Concern spikes in her voice.

“Just answer me.” I let out a long breath. “Please. Why do you love me?” I grip the phone harder, tears clouding my vision.

“When we were eleven, we were at your house, reading comics,” she says, and for some reason I know exactly which memory she’s trying to draw for me. We were on my bed, surrounded by several open and splayed X-Men comics, and we would read the same one at the same time. She’d wait patiently for me to hurry up, her eyes skimming the panels quickly while I soaked in each line, each bleed of color. “Do you remember?” she asks after a long pause.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice shaking.

“We both knew you were most like Hellion. You make the wrong choices, even when you know where the right ones lie.”

I nod to myself, tears spilling. I try to breathe a full breath, but the pain chokes me.

“But that day, you said you aspired to be Cyclops. Scott Summers was strong. He took care of everyone in the face of crisis. He was a man that people wanted by their side.” Her voice shakes too, like she’s near tears. “Lo,” she says, “you’ve made it. You’re my Scott Summers, and without you, I wouldn’t be here.”

I close my eyes and let that sink in. She doesn’t have to say, I love you because… The sentiment is attached to each and every word. She loves me because she believes I’m strong. She loves me because she’s a part of me.

She loves me because I’ve become a better man through all of this.

“Lo,” she continues. “Whatever Emily said, I need you to know that I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be here when you come home. There will always be an us.”

“A Lo and Lily,” I breathe.

“Or Lily and Lo."

I smile. “Thank you.”

She pauses. “Do I have to say the rest?”

“No, but you can if you want.”

“Don’t fucking drink, Loren Hale,” she says sternly, but it comes off more cute than rigid. It works all the same.

“I love you, Lil.” I straighten up and wipe my eyes with the back of my arm.

“Are you coming home then?”

“I have to make a stop first.”

She sucks in a worried breath. “Lo.”

“Trust me,” I say.

“I love you too,” she tells me.

I turn on the ignition and let those words carry me.

I don’t remember the office being this cold or dark, but I walk in with purpose. I’m no longer sorry or sad. I’m fueled by something else, something darker and stronger that begins to eat at my core. It’s a demon that my father carries, the one where anger turns into vile words. The one where we stop being pathetic and we start being mean. I thought being sober would change me. Make this part of me vanish. But I realize it’s not only alcohol that powered my hate. It’s programmed inside of me from years and years of being raised by someone like him.

“You’re finally back,” Brian says, lounging behind the desk with this nonchalance that has always dug under my skin. “Did you get tired of ignoring my calls?”

“You were nothing, if not persistent,” I snap dryly, slumping down into the chair. I met Brian in rehab, and we discussed my life in grave detail. He was supposed to be my outpatient therapist, and I guess I kind of fucked that up when I stopped going to our sessions. Even more so when I stopped answering his calls.

“So why are you here, Lo?” He leans even further back in his chair.

“How do you not fucking hate me?” I ask in confusion.

“I assume you had a valid reason for skipping the session,” Brian says calmly, “and if not, then that’s on you.”

“I’m not talking about skipping sessions,” I snap. “How can you sit there and listen to my problems and not roll your eyes every two seconds?”

“Why would I do that?” He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look confused or upset. Brian is a blank slate that bounces my words right back at me. All this time, I thought he stared at me like I was this royal douchebag—that I was some loser he had to stomach. But I know I was projecting. I wanted him to hate me. I was begging for it because I’m not worthy of anyone’s compassion.

“I have more money than you will ever have in your lifetime,” I tell him. “You have to sit there and listen to me bitch about stupid shit for hours on end, and then I return home to my nice house with my nice car.”

“You think I should hate you because you have money and because I have to listen to your problems? Is that why you stopped coming?”

“No, I stopped coming because I couldn’t bear to stare at your ugly face any longer.”

He actually smiles at that. It’s genuine, which makes me feel like a bigger dick. He sets his pen on his desk and sits up. “I know you, Lo,” he reminds me. “We’ve talked for months, so I know that no one, especially your father, has ever told you this.”

“If this is your fortune cookie wisdom, you can save it.”

“Having money doesn’t make you an unfeeling automaton. You’re human. You can still have problems. The difference is that you have the ability to fix them. You just have to want to. Not everyone can receive the same help you can or afford the rehab facility you went to.” My stomach curdles at the truth. “But that doesn’t mean your recovery can’t be difficult. It doesn’t mean that what people say on TV or in the tabloids doesn’t hurt as much. You still bleed like the rest of us. You can cry. You can be upset. That right has not been taken from you.”

I stare dazedly at the ground.

“And Lo,” he continues. “I usually don’t offer my personal opinion to my patients, but I’m going to make an exception with you.”

“How kind.”

He doesn’t smile this time. “Underneath this rough, I-hate-myself-and-everyone-around-me exterior is a good guy. And I think that you have the ability to accomplish great things if you just start forgiving yourself.”

“For what?”

“I think you know what.”

“Well, you’re so keen on giving personal opinions, why don’t you tell me,” I snap.

He doesn’t. Instead he grabs his pen, leans back in his chair and clicks a couple times. “Sometimes the person we think we’ll become is the person we already are, and the person we truly become is the person we least expect.” He clicks his pen again and points it at me. “There’s your fortune cookie wisdom.”

I think he’s telling me that I have a chance. That the life I imagined—where I become the self-loathing man behind a desk, where I become my father—doesn’t have to be the one meant for me. I want to take the leap while my mind is clear, while I can see an alternative future that doesn’t look as grim. I want Lily. A house. The white picket fence kind of happiness. I didn’t ever think I deserved that, but maybe, one day, I can become the kind of person that does.

I shift in my seat, but I don’t break his gaze. “I went to see my mother. My real mother,” I tell him.

His head tilts, but his face has gone blank again. This time, I don’t feel like punching him for his lack of reaction. I just talk.

It pours out of me like I’ve carved open my stomach. Every word makes me lighter and freer.

I don’t stop.

{ 50 } LILY CALLOWAY

The next morning, Lo and I head to his office. He shares all the details about his mother, and he lets me hug him whenever I reach out. While I can’t physically relate to a parent abandoning me, I understand what it feels like to want your mother to love you and not receiving the same affection in return.

He sinks into his leather chair, and I hesitate to bring up what happened with Dr. Evans so soon after his emotional reconnection with Emily. It’s why I didn’t mention it on the phone last night. Last thing I wanted was to instill guilt and have him break his sobriety. (He admitted to sitting in the parking lot of a bar—I knew it.)

I skim the comic books on his shelf while he works on a couple contracts. A guy who runs another indie publishing company has been giving Lo advice, so every week Lo grows more confident about the job. He even talks about hiring a partner to help with all the areas he’s weak in. And that idea, of asking someone for help, doesn’t make him balk in detest.

I’m supposed to be unpacking boxes downstairs at Superheroes & Scones, so my lingering presence must catch Lo’s attention. “You okay, Lil?”

I pull a She-Hulk comic off the shelf and focus on the cover while I speak. “I actually decided to go back to Allison for therapy. And my father is okay with it. He says it won’t break the deal.” He also told me that he’ll be filing a lawsuit against Dr. Evans. Hopefully, I helped some other girl that could have been harassed.

“Fuck,” he curses. “I forgot to ask you about your last session with…” He trails off, and I meet his eyes that have grown as big as saucers.

“I’m glad I went,” I tell him. “I would have never fired him otherwise.”

“What the fuck did he do?”

I hug the comic to my chest like a pillow, letting it give me some sort of strength. “He wanted me to masturbate while he shocked me,” I say very quickly.

Lo grips the table, his eyes turning into pure fury.

“But I said no! And then he didn’t like that so he unzipped his pants.”

Lo jumps to his feet. I drop the comic and rush to stop him from leaving the room.

My hands press to his chest. “I said no, Lo,” I say proudly. “I screamed it, and then I screamed for Garth. Everything worked out fine.”

“Everything is not fine,” Lo tells me, hurt caressing his amber eyes. “Fine would be you never having to deal with that sick fuck.”

“It’s over,” I say. “My father is handling it. I don’t want to keep dwelling about every bad thing that happens to us. I want to move on. Don’t you?” I’m ready to start the newest chapter of our lives. One where we’re not assaulted by our vices. One where we’re happy.

His shoulders slacken and his hands rise to my cheeks. “Are you okay?” he asks, searching my eyes for the truth.

“I feel strong,” I say. “I know that’s probably weird.”

He shakes his head and his eyes seem to say no, not at all.

“There’s something else,” I start. Worry shrouds his face. “Not like that. It’s a good thing, I think.” I take a deep breath and his hands fall to mine. “I’ve decided that I don’t want to see the blacklist of what I can’t do…sexually, I mean.” I grimace. Really, Lily?

Wrinkles crease his forehead. “Why?”

“I realized that it doesn’t matter what I can’t do with you,” I say. “We’re together…for real this time. No piece of paper or list can tell me what I’m missing. I have everything I could want.”

I can’t even blink before his lips are on mine, before his arms have pulled me to his body. I am cloaked in Loren Hale. He brushes his hand against the back of my neck before ending the kiss, but he doesn’t retract fully. I’m still very much in his arms.

And then he lifts me up with two hands firmly planted on my ass. My legs swoop around his waist instantly. Obviously my limbs are processing what’s happening faster than my brain.

His eyes melt into mine as he slowly carries me backwards and sets me down on his desk. My heart beats like a drum at this—a fantasy I’ve imagined since I was in high school. Desks. Sex over them. Sex on them. Sex near them. Of course I can make furniture into something stimulating.

Is this really happening or is it all in my dirty mind?

The corners of his lips rise at my confusion and anticipation. His amusement only riles my cravings, but I try to push them back, not wanting to turn into a compulsive monster.

His hands run along my thighs, my legs still tight around his waist. “How many times have you pictured this?”

“On this specific desk?”

He grins and kisses me again. I deepen it and hold onto the back of his hair, gripping tightly. He groans a little as he pulls away, and then he tugs off my shorts with ease. I’m about to swoop my legs back around his waist, but I stop myself. Shockingly, I even stop him, planting two firm hands on his pecs. Oh, those are nice.

“Lil?”

Right, focus. I meet his perplexed gaze. “I’m not stupid,” I say.

His frown morphs into hurt. “I never said you were.”

I shake my head. This is all coming out wrong. “What I mean is,” I start again, “after all those times you denied me sex on the beach, in the car, basically anywhere but our bedroom and bathroom, I’ve figured out that public sex has to be on that blacklist.”

He takes a step back and the distance hurts more than I thought. I reach out and grab onto his hand for some sort of connection. He lets me hold on tight. “You said it doesn’t matter what’s on it,” Lo reminds me.

“It doesn’t,” I say. “It doesn’t, I promise. I just don’t want to break it.”

My words appease him enough to walk back to me, to slip his hand from mine so he can place both on my cheeks. “I won’t let you break any of those rules. That’s my promise to you.”

“But—”

“It’s my office,” he says with a humored smile. “It’s my private place.”

Ohhhhh. YES! I bite my bottom lip to try and hide my grin.

“So you’re all smiles now?” he asks. “You know what I think about smiles?”

I shake my head, still smiling as his hands make their descent down. His fingers teasingly slide just beneath the hem of my panties.

His lips brush my ears. “They’re not nearly as sexy as this.” He slips his fingers inside of me and presses against a tender spot. My face instantly contorts into one of sheer pleasure, my mouth opening and my eyes fluttering. A noise escapes my throat.

He looks all too pleased. “Who’s smiling now, love?”

Definitely you. I grab onto his shoulder as he replaces his fingers with his hard cock. I have the urge to rock against him, but I make myself stay still as can be. I want to show him that I have control. That I’m trying.

He thrusts in and out, and I clutch onto his back, his arms, anything to hold myself together. His hand grazes my neck, and he leans forward for a kiss but I have trouble just staying still. Moving my lips seems like a difficult feat. He doesn’t seem to care. He presses his mouth against mine and urges it open. When I don’t respond, he goes to sucking my bottom lip. Noises bubble up from my throat, noises that I wasn’t even sure I could make.

Now he’s smiling.

He pumps faster and harder and I lose my grip, almost falling backwards on the desk. He catches me and then slowly sets me flat against a few loose papers.

“Eyes on me, love,” he orders in a husky breath. I realize I’m staring at his cock. I look up to meet his gaze. It’s heady, intense, and fills me fuller than any other body part. I don’t break it.

Not now. Not ever.

{ 51 } LILY CALLOWAY

“Oh my God! I found your porn!” I walk out of Ryke’s closest with a shoebox. I can only imagine it holds incriminating evidence, verifying that I’m not the only porn-lover of our friends. My glee is all too apparent.

Lo and Ryke glance up from the floor, spread out with bubble wrap and boxes. We’re packing up some things from his old room at his mother’s house. He’s moving from his flat in Philly to a new apartment—same city, just a place with more guest bedrooms and less paparazzi lurking outside.

Instead of buying all new things for the extra space, he’s trying to consolidate what he has here. Ryke planned the packing party during Sara Hale’s book club, so she’s not home. Lo doesn’t really want to meet her face-to-face, considering he’s the result of her failed marriage.

“Open it,” Ryke tells me, motioning towards the shoebox in my hands.

I flip the top and my spirits pop. Baseball cards. Hundreds of them. One of the guys looks kind of hunky…maybe…

I hold up a card with the hot young player. “You totally jerked off to this.”

Lo grins, even as he struggles wrapping an odd shaped lamp.

Ryke gives me a look. “You would,” he refutes. “And maybe I would too if I was attracted to men. But no, I traded those with kids from grade school, I didn’t jizz on them.” He turns to Lo. “Does she do this to you?”

“What?” he asks in amusement. “Try to find my porn?”

I freeze, eyes wide. “You have porn?” Oh my God, there may be porn at our house. Right now. I gasp. “Where?”

“At my dad’s place,” he explains. “From my teenage years.” Oh. That makes sense. He wouldn’t keep porn around me—even if I’ve done really well these past few weeks.

“So I’m the only one you like to embarrass?” Ryke asks me.

“You can’t get embarrassed,” I remind him, “and you told me to be comfortable talking about sex, so it’s your fault.” It’s true I’ve opened up around Ryke, and I think we can even call each other friends now.

“Fucking fantastic.” He grabs a roll of tape and tries to roll it over a box, but the dispenser shrieks in revolt. He grumbles a few curse words and throws it on the ground. “Lily, can you go find me another roll of tape? There should be one in the kitchen cabinet.”

“I’m on it.” I exit the bedroom and journey through the large house that has more unnecessary bedrooms than necessary ones. I find the kitchen and start opening as many cabinets as I can, avoiding the dishware and pots. A few drawers later, I find the miscellaneous area. I squat and discover tape behind a tub of bulbs.

Success.

I spin around, about to head back to Ryke’s room but something stops me. Something situated on the tea cart by the breakfast table. A small box is wedged in an overflowing basket of mail.

It’s brown, like any normal package, but this one is different. My heart lurches to my throat. Swallowing a lump, I approach the box, confirming my suspicion. Tiny X’s are typed all across the packaging.

My hands shake as I set the tape on the cart and inspect the label.

From: Kinkyme.net

It’s the same site that sent me the dildo, but I assumed the leak just mailed the package directly to my parent’s house. Wait. That’s not right. A note accompanied the sex toy, so the leak had to mail the box to their house first, place the message inside, and then send it to me.

This is Ryke’s house. We never come here. He knows this. He knows more about us than almost anyone. We let him in.

Lo was right from the beginning, wasn’t he?

Tears well. Ryke made this elaborate plot, infiltrating our lives, just to cause Lo more pain—to ruin his life because he destroyed his just by simply existing.

Why is it that the people you come to love are the ones that seem to hurt you the most?

I continue reading the box.

To: William Crane

A fake name to cover his tracks. I grip the box, hating everything and then nothing at all. A horrible pain shreds my chest. Lo won’t just be hurt by the news. He’ll be devastated. How can he handle another disappointment, another betrayal? Even imagining his reaction brings a flood of tears, dripping down my cheeks.

I have a sudden urge to rip open the box and see what’s inside. Before I search for a knife, the patter of shoes echoes, the sound growing towards me. And then the noise silences by the doorway—the kitchen doorway.

Sara Hale sets her purse and her book club’s hardback on the counter. Her golden-brown hair compliments her flower sundress. As soon as she makes eye contact with me, her glowing face tightens. And then her gaze drops to the box in my hands.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, not peeling from the box. “What is that?” Her lip spasms. “You need to leave right now.”

Each time she speaks, I can barely register the words. They zip right into my ear and out the other.

“Did you not hear me?” Her eyes sear with hate. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know what I did to her. “Get out of my house!”

“Mom, what the hell?” Ryke rushes down the stairs and into the kitchen, Lo right behind him. I’m too stunned to do much of anything.

“You brought her here!” Sara shrieks, and then her eyes ping to Lo who hurries to my side. “And him?”

Lo touches my shoulder, and he glances at the box in my hands. “Lo,” I say softly. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so confused.

Ryke follows my gaze, and before Lo or I can do a thing, his brown eyes light with fire. He faces his mother. “What the fuck did you do?” His voice is hollow and cold.

“Get them out, Ryke,” she retorts, pointing towards the front door.

“What the fuck did you do?!” he screams, his hands on his head. His chest rises and falls.

“Sweetie, let’s talk about this later.” She reaches out to touch his arm, but Ryke jerks back, throwing his hands in the air.

“What the fuck is going on?” he says. “What the fuck did you do?” He shakes his head repeatedly, and it’s then, that I know for certain, who the real leak is.

Ryke had nothing to do with the scandal. Lo’s brother is just as innocent as the rest of us.

“I don’t want to talk in front of them,” Sara says.

“Did you tell the press that Lily’s a sex addict?” Ryke asks, his eyes reddening as he suppresses more volatile emotions. He’s about to explode.

I always wanted to see Ryke Meadows flinch, but not from something like this.

“Ryke—”

“Did you fucking tell them?!” he yells, clutching the granite counter.

“Yes,” she suddenly says, touching her chest as though a weight has been lifted off. All this time, we assumed that the blackmailer was a man. Yet, here she stands.

Lo is rigid beside me, and if the perpetrator was anyone else, he’d most likely be sending the person to hell with his words. I think we’re both more concerned for Ryke in this moment.

The painful silence stretches. Ryke stands still, unmoving, and his tears gather and threaten to fall.

“Ryke, honey,” Sara says, “you have to understand that Jonathan—”

“Stop,” Ryke says, his voice breaking. “I get why you did it. You ruined a girl’s life because you wanted to be free of him. You wanted people to know that you were cheated on. You couldn’t say a word about his infidelity because of the divorce contract. But if the media found out inadvertently, you’d still keep Jonathan’s money and everyone would know about Loren’s real mother. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She doesn’t say a thing.

Ryke shakes his head again, his voice shaking even more. “So you tormented Lily to hurt Loren, to retaliate against Jonathan fucking Hale, to stick it to his son, and I guess you strung Lily along for a while because Jonathan was squirming. You liked that. You took pleasure in his stress. And then when you leaked the news to the press, your book club friends and everyone else realized that you were cheated on. Right? You weren’t the gold digger after all. That’s great, Mom. Congratulations. You succeeded.”

“Ryke—”

“You know what else you did?” He blinks and tears fall. “You lost your only son.” He goes to turn around, and Sara grabs his arm.

“Wait, honey—”

Ryke untangles from her hold but stops and faces her again. “What? What could you possibly say that could justify terrorizing a girl for months?”

“You were never supposed to meet him,” she says under her breath, her cheeks slick with her own tears. She points at Lo. “He’s not your family.”

“He’s my brother!” Ryke yells. “He would never hurt me the way you just have.” He takes a staggered breath, tugs at his shirt and holds back a scream. “You don’t get what you did, Mom. Do you even know what you did to me? Do you fucking understand?”

Sara’s chin quivers as she cries. “Please, stop. Don’t go.” She touches his arm.

“You’ve made me choose between you and Dad my whole fucking life. You can’t stop me from having a relationship with Lo. You can’t make that decision for me.”

“I’m your mom.”

“And you lied to me!” Ryke shouts, pain enveloping his face. “You ruined someone’s life for a fucking feud, and you were willing to sacrifice me doing it.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “If I thought you’d react like this, I would have never—”

“I don’t believe you,” he says flatly. “If you knew me at all, you’d realize that I’d hate you for what you’ve done. I can forgive you for a lot of things. But this…” He lets out a weak laugh like he’s stuck inside a nightmare. “What the fuck, Mom?” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gone in an hour. I have a few more boxes.”

She can’t stop crying. Sara hugs the counter, expecting Ryke to come into her arms, to comfort her and say everything’s okay.

But he can barely look at her without his breath shortening.

“Just answer me one thing,” Ryke says. “How did you find out that she was a sex addict? I never told you that.” He didn’t? I thought maybe that’s how she learned.

Sara sniffs and gestures to his pocket. “Your cell…your texts…”

Oh God.

Ryke pinches his eyes.

She read his texts. I’m sure there are many mentioning my addiction, or hinting about it. Ryke always asked how therapy went. He was the first person to tell Lo and me that aversion therapy is sadistic and to stop seeing Dr. Evans. And before that, he most likely texted back and forth with Lo about my progress with Allison.

Lo kisses my hand a couple times, and he wipes my tears with his thumb. I let go of his palm because I think we both know that I’m not the one crumbling right now. I don’t even need to nudge Lo. He’s beside his brother within the second.

“So you found their numbers from my cell?” Ryke asks, trying to suppress more tears, his eyes bloodshot.

“I just…” She cries into her hand.

“You what?” Ryke says. “You wanted me to stop hanging out with Lo? You wanted Jonathan’s son to suffer because Lo took me from you? That’s…fucked up, Mom. That’s real fucked up.”

“Please…it sounds worse than it is.”

“I assure you, it’s that bad.” Ryke tries to take a deep breath, but he can’t quite let it out. “Well, you got what you wanted. I hope you’re happy with that.” Ryke turns to Lo. “Can you help me finish my room? And then we can get out of here.”

“Sure.”

We leave his mother bawling in the corner of the kitchen. I almost feel bad. Almost. But when I see Ryke, that pity for her transforms into hate again. Because she hurt her son more than she could hurt me. This was personal, and even though she was going after Jonathan, she hit Ryke directly in the heart.

The door closes, and Ryke just shatters completely.

He squats in the middle of the room, his hands on his head, not able to take a full breath. “What the fuck?” he keeps repeating. “What the fuck?” He laughs painfully into a broken sob.

Lo bends beside him and sets a hand on his back. “Hey, you’re all right. It’s okay.”

Ryke covers his face in his hands and he screams, all the pent-up rage coming. He suddenly shoots to his feet, his reddened eyes pinging around the room, crazed and tear-streaked. He finds a baseball bat.

“Whoa, whoa,” Lo says, prying the weapon from Ryke’s hand.

“I need to hit something,” Ryke says, restless.

“Just sit down.”

“I can’t!” Ryke screams. “My mother fucking ruined your life! None of this would have happened if it weren’t for—”

And then Lo pulls him to his chest, for a hug. Ryke hesitates for a second, and I wonder if he’s going to release his aggression on Lo by punching him. Instead, he fists the back of Lo’s shirt, and they stay like that, with Ryke choking, with his body vibrating in agony and guilt, and Lo clutching tightly, not letting go.

“It’s not your fault,” Lo says, holding onto his older brother.

Many months ago, the roles were reversed. Lo would have never been strong enough to be a support for someone else, especially someone that hardly ever breaks down.

I wipe a few silent tears. I know the kind of remorse that puts deep pain on your chest, the kind that feels as weighted as Atlas bearing the world. It’s soul-crushing.

“Listen to me,” Lo breathes in his ear. “Meeting you was the best thing that’s ever happened to us. I’m sober and Lily’s in recovery. None of that would have been possible if it wasn’t for you.” He shakes Ryke, and a tear slips out of Lo’s eye. “You are the fucking reason I’m with the girl I love; you’re my brother, so don’t you ever feel guilty for what’s happened now. That’s not on you.” He holds up Ryke’s face to look him in the eyes. “Hey, you hear me?”

Ryke nods over and over, trying to believe the words. After a long pause, Ryke says in a strained voice, “Our parents spent so much time hating each other that they didn’t even fucking realize what they were doing to us.” He shakes his head in a daze.

Lo squeezes his shoulder.

I stay quiet, not wanting to disturb them, but I’m thankful that through all of this, they both have each other. Even though Sara and Jonathan repelled their child with their constant fighting, they’ve also unconsciously drawn their sons together.

Ryke stares at the boxes. “I’m never coming back here.”

“Are you sure?” Lo asks.

“Yeah,” Ryke nods. He pats Lo’s back. “Yeah, I’m sure.” And through the silence, I hear the words that pass between them.

You’re my family.

I think we can finally move on.

{ 52 } LOREN HALE

My father didn’t tell me Sara Hale was the leak to protect himself. Or me.

He was protecting Ryke.

While the news has devastated Ryke, I am freed by it. I can stop being so rooted in hate. Now I can try to be a better man than my father. I can breathe.

My fist raps a black door. No one stands beside me. No one’s here for me to lean on. I am alone with my own resolve, and maybe months ago that wouldn’t have been enough.

The door flies open and almost swings right back in my face. I brace the frame with a hand. “Hear me out,” I tell him.

Aaron Wells lets out an exasperated sigh, but he surrenders to my plea. “What do you want, Loren? I thought we already had this talk four months ago?” It’s been that long?

“This is a different talk.”

His eyes darken and he crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re not coming inside this time, and just so you know Julie isn’t home. So don’t try screaming for her either.”

“I don’t want to talk to Julie.”

“Then what do you want?” What do I want? Why do people always ask me that?

“You met me at a really bad time in my life, and you were just being nice by inviting me to your party.”

“And then you broke every wine bottle in my parent’s cellar. Yeah, I remember,” he says. “Is this your way of apologizing? Is this like Step 7 in AA or something? Do you have to go around and ask for forgiveness from everyone you screwed over?”

I shake my head. “It’s nothing like that. I’m not asking you to forgive me, and I can’t forgive you for what you did to Lily.” I want to, but maybe that type of strength is out of my control.

His jaw locks, and I sense that he’s about to slam the door back in my face. “But,” I say quickly, “one of us should have been the bigger person and stopped it before it got out of hand.”

“You mean before you and your father made sure I wouldn’t get accepted into an Ivy League,” he growls. “Thanks for that.”

“Look, you don’t have to be my friend or anything. You can hate me all you want, but I came here to tell you that I’m sorry.” The words are hard to produce, and I don’t feel exactly better by saying them. I’m not searching for that relief. I just know that this is right. And this is what I have to do. “I’m done,” I say. “Whatever shit we had in the past, it’s the past for me. You want to carry it around, fine. Regardless, I want you to have these.” I remove two white envelopes from my back pocket.

His eyes glaze over them with curiosity and then he snorts. “Are you buying my forgiveness with tickets to Wrigley Field?”

“You told me that you couldn’t get a job and compete with Ivy grads,” I say. “That should help start your career. Greg Calloway and my father wrote references for you. I know there’s lots of bad energy with the companies, but Fizzle and Hale Co. are still world-renowned. It still means something.”

Aaron stares at the letters and shakes his head. “I don’t want your fucking charity, especially if you’re only doing this to make yourself feel better.”

“I’m doing it because it’s right,” I say in irritation. “Burn it if you want. And I promise, you won’t ever have to see me again.”

I turn around and descend the stone steps. Lily waits in the car for me, tapping her hands to the dashboard and singing aloud to whatever song blares through the speakers. I immediately smile.

“Loren!”

I look back. Aaron’s face has softened into something less hateful. Almost like the first time I met him, when he was just that nice lacrosse kid inviting me to his party. “I’m sorry too,” he says.

Hearing the words are almost as hard as saying them. I see him terrorizing Lily for months, cornering her in the halls. I realize how difficult it must have been to listen to me say the same thing. My throat closes up before I can speak. So I just nod.

I set my sights on Lily again.

She is my past, my present, my future. So when I open the door and slide into the driver’s seat, I’m not surprised that it feels like I’m returning home.

My nerves rocket the closer we reach our house in Princeton. I can’t stop fidgeting, and Lily keeps giving me weird looks. I spout off some story about a new client for Halway Comics.

Our apartment feels abandoned when we walk inside.

“Rose!” Lily calls out. She doesn’t know that Rose is staying over Connor’s tonight, that I have specifically vacated this place for us.

“She must be working late,” I say.

“She works too much.” Lily heads to the kitchen. “Maybe we should cook her dinner…” She thinks about this, probably remembering she can’t cook. “Or order her dinner and bring it to her office? She’d like that.”

She would. If she were at her office.

“I’m sure Connor already had dinner delivered to her,” I say, hooking my fingers in her belt loops.

“True. He’s been spending more time with her lately, hasn’t he? I think he’s worried another Sebastian will Jedi mind-trick her.”

I’m surprised she’s not focusing on the fact that I’m tugging her into my chest. It’s becoming easier and easier to touch Lily without her jumping my bones like a wild animal. The horny, insane part of me will probably miss her crazy sex drive. But the part of me that loves her, the one that I choose to listen to, is so fucking proud of this girl.

“How about we call it a night?” I say and slip my hand down the back of her jeans.

She gasps a little and grabs onto my T-shirt. “Is that code for what position we’ll be taking?” she asks with a delighted smile.

“I don’t speak in code. You’ll know exactly what I want.” I squeeze her ass. “Me. You. Bedroom. Now.” My teeth catch her earlobe lightly, and her breath deepens. And then I press feather-light kisses on her neck. At the fourth one, she squirms with laughter.

“Okay! Okay! Okay!” She throws her hands up in surrender. “Do not tickle me with your kisses! That’s a dirty game.”

I can’t stop grinning.

She spins on her heels, and I follow her close up the stairs. She stops a couple times to check that I’m right behind her. The third time, I give her a look. “Do you think I’m going to disappear, love?”

“Maybe,” she says softly and then scampers the rest of the way.

She presses her back against the door, blocking our entry. I try to remain calm, but I know what’s behind those doors. And she unknowingly prolongs this process.

“I think I’m going to get fat off scones,” she tells me, relishing this fact.

“You’re supposed to sell the scones, not eat them.”

“Who made those rules?”

“Capitalists.”

She crinkles her nose. “I like my way better.”

I nod to the door. “You going in?”

“I’m trying something new,” she tells me. “Restraint.”

Jesus Christ. She has to choose tonight for her personal achievement? “Should we discuss donuts next?” I say jokingly.

She looks like she’s taking this into serious consideration, and I give in. I reach past her waist and turn the knob, opening the door behind her back.

Her eyes go big, and she still doesn’t turn around. “Are you testing me?”

I put my hands on her shoulders and walk her backwards, leading her slowly into our room. Step by step. Her eyes fix on mine until she looks down, obviously feeling something soft under her bare feet.

“What…”

Red petals decorate the bedroom floor while burning candles flicker on the dresser and nightstand. It’s simple and perfect. I drop to my knee.

Her hands press to her lips, and I see that gaudy ring on her hand glinting back at me. It represents coercion and deception, all the wrong reasons for a marriage that should be filled with love. We have lived through lies for too long. I’m ready for this to be honest, not another sham. I’m so ready for her to take it off. Her eyes have already welled with tears and I haven’t even spoken yet.

I pull out a small box from my pocket. Colorful and wrapped in comic book strips.

All my nerves seep out of me. I am filled with something else, something warm and pure that makes me never want to leave this moment.

“Lily Calloway, will you marry me, for real this time?”

I open the box, and a ruby cut into a heart sparkles back at her. Diamonds circle it.

“Yes!” She jumps a little, tears seeping out of the corners of her eyes. I rise to my feet, and with one kiss, I have her planted firmly back on Earth. She tangles her fingers in my hair and lets me deepen the kiss.

When I part from her, she begins yanking at her gaudy ring. She gets wild-eyed. “Lo, it’s not coming off,” she panics. “It’s not coming off!”

“Calm down,” I coax. I test it out, but it’s tight around her swollen finger. Maybe she is gaining some weight. I kiss her temple and take her hand in mine, leading her to the bathroom. We spend a couple of minutes soaking her finger in soap before the ring comes loose and clinks on the counter.

What if my ring doesn’t fit her?

She reaches for the box, and I grab it from her. “Let me,” I say.

She holds out her hand. The ring slides effortlessly, the leftover soap on her finger probably helping. She appraises the ruby and the band for a long moment. “I love it, Lo.” Her eyes twinkle as they meet mine. “I love you more.”

After all we’ve been through. Years and years of mistakes, it feels like a dream to be here in this moment. Right now. Sober. Alive. With her.

I pull her to me, and I lean in for a kiss. Her hand instinctively raises and slides across the back of my shoulders. When we break apart, I rest my forehead to hers. Our breaths mingle and I say, “I have another proposal. Or…more like a confession.”

“Is it bad?” she whispers.

“Terrible.”

She doesn’t pull away from our closeness and her eyes flit to my lips. “I can handle it.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Her lips twitch as she recognizes the tone of my voice. Oh, how I do love teasing her.

I nudge my nose with hers before my lips find her ear. I nip it softly before I say, “I confess, that I’d very much like to make love to you.” My heart does a dance at the last words. We never say make love. We fuck. We screw. We bang. Making love is for the soft-hearted without tar-coated pasts. Lily claims she doesn’t deserve to make love, but I’m determined to change her attitude.

“Is it different than fucking?” she asks me with wide eyes.

“Very much so.”

Frown lines crease her forehead. “How?”

“I’ll show you.”

Her eyes brighten with possibilities, but she doesn’t insist, doesn’t ask or compel me for more. She waits for me.

Just as I asked.